A residential career with responsibility dated to each appointment

Mandate

Define residential propositions around the activities residents need to carry out and the services required to support them.

Outcomes

• Chose two 30 sqm rooms rather than one 60 sqm room for a 2023 shared-workplace brief, accepting the loss of the larger event use.
• Supported A$1.2 million assisted-booking development after twenty-one incomplete app-only tasks in a ninety-six-person prototype.
• Began a separate executive nominee directorship at wholly owned Rovellen Resident Services in July 2022.

Decisions in context

I became CPO in July 2020 and began executive presentations to the parent board. The role brings product priorities together across the home, the shared space and the service process. In the workroom case, dividing sixty square metres meant explicitly surrendering a larger event room rather than suggesting that the change improved every possible use. In the booking case, another route needed an operating owner as well as a product screen. Since July 2022 I have also served as an executive nominee director of the group’s wholly owned resident-services subsidiary. That appointment overlaps this employment intentionally and is recorded separately from executive presentations; I make no independence claim for it. My 78-person function and A$23 million delegation do not make the group’s 6400 homes or A$3.2 billion asset value personal authority. The current chapter concerns the product and service commitments I help define within that wider institution, with specialist design and operational responsibilities retained.

Reason for the move

Current role; any additional appointment would require capacity and relationships to be assessed alongside employment and the subsidiary seat.

Concurrent appointment

The July 2022–present Rovellen Resident Services nominee directorship is a concurrent group-company board role, not a second executive employment appointment.

Mandate

Balance the uses competing for shared residential space and make their service implications visible in the product choice.

Outcomes

• Brought overnight visitors and everyday resident storage into one 2018 amenity comparison.
• Chose four guest suites and two equivalent storage rooms instead of six suites.
• Supported A$2.6 million development without converting seventy-two household accounts into a rent or occupancy forecast.

Decisions in context

This appointment required me to consider what a more attractive amenity displaced. The 2018 guest-suite proposal was a useful test. Forty-two participating households discussed overnight visitors and thirty discussed storage, but the visual appeal of guest accommodation could have made the second use seem less important before we had chosen anything. I accepted a smaller guest offer so that both needs had a place in the development brief. That was a product allocation, not evidence of future guest nights or rent performance. By 2019 I led fifty-six colleagues through four direct reports with A$15 million expense. The company’s 5100 homes and A$2.4 billion asset value were institutional context for that stage. Moving towards the CPO role followed this broader view of the resident proposition: a home’s usefulness is shaped by the ordinary spaces and service processes around it, not only by the features that are easiest to present during a viewing.

Reason for the move

Promoted to CPO as residential product and service responsibilities were brought into a wider remit.

Mandate

Translate observed resident tasks into product briefs that development and service teams could examine together.

Outcomes

• Reviewed 400 parcels over a fortnight before retaining the proposed 120-standard-locker feature.
• Selected eighty standard and twenty larger compartments, plus a separately handled oversized route.
• Supported A$640000 for the differentiated proposition and accepted a lower total compartment count.

Decisions in context

I joined Mervellen in April 2007, carrying the wardrobe lesson into work at community scale. The question was still what the feature allowed a person to do, but the product now depended more visibly on a shared operating arrangement. In the 2011 parcel case, ninety of 400 observed items did not fit the standard compartment. Choosing 100 mixed-size slots instead of 120 standard ones required a better explanation than a count. It also required a service path for the items still outside the physical mix. My responsibility was to bring those choices into the brief while relevant specialists and operators retained their own work. The 2013 team, expense and company figures locate the director role at its actual scale, before the later portfolio and CPO appointments. This period strengthened my view that an exception route belongs in product development when the exception is already a recurring part of the resident’s experience.

Reason for the move

Promoted into resident-proposition leadership to connect individual facilities with the wider community offer.

Mandate

Develop residential features from the practical tasks residents expected them to support.

Outcomes

• Approved a 600 mm external wardrobe opening whose 550 mm clear passage did not fit 560 mm cases in the 2005 trial.
• Changed the module to 650 mm external and 590 mm clear, accepting 50 mm additional allocation.
• Retained three larger-item exceptions after seventeen fits in the later twenty-person prototype.

Decisions in context

The product-manager role gave me responsibility for details that could become difficult to question once they were on an approved drawing. The 2005 wardrobe example shows why that authority needed challenge. I had accepted the external dimension as if it answered the resident’s storage task. Fiona Marvellan redirected the discussion to the clear opening and the space required to change it. The revised module used another fifty millimetres of allocation, so the correction had a design consequence rather than existing only in a better explanation. The separate retest retained three items outside the revised scope. I do not claim the work established general accessibility or universal storage fit. By 2006 the role covered twenty-two colleagues with A$2.9 million expense, within a substantially larger residential employer. I moved in 2007 with a stronger understanding of the difference between a number that is accurate on a plan and a feature that supports the activity promised by the product brief.

Reason for the move

Joined Mervellen for responsibility across a wider range of community facilities and resident services.

Mandate

Help organise accounts of how residents expected to use the spaces and features in a home.

Outcomes

• Began residential research after the December 1991 built-environment degree.
• Learned to distinguish a room’s advertised name from the activities residents expected it to support.
• Progressed to product management while retaining a clear distinction between supervised research and specialist design approval.

Decisions in context

I started in February 1992, with a degree and an individual contributor’s responsibilities. The nine-person group taught me to listen for the ordinary tasks behind broad preferences. A resident might ask for more storage but mean an awkward object that did not fit a standard opening; another might ask for shared space but need a setting that did not require constant negotiation with other users. I helped organise those accounts for colleagues who held the product and design authority. I did not manage the group or approve investment in the employer’s 620 homes. The A$180 million asset value and 110 employees describe the company in 1998, near the end of this first appointment. Later work would add management and spending responsibility, but it would not remove the need to examine the actual task. The career begins with that practical inquiry rather than a retrospective claim that I had always possessed the scope of a CPO.

Reason for the move

Promoted to residential product manager after developing practical research experience.