We’re Hiring: Furniture & Estimating Coordinator

If you’re organised, commercially curious and looking for the kind of role where you can grow, and pick up a broad set of skills across furniture and estimating, we’d love to hear from you.

We’re looking for a Furniture & Estimating Coordinator to join our team at Insight House in Altrincham. This is a trainee-level role with no industry experience required and we’ll provide full training across both sides of the job; what matters most to us is the right attitude.

It’s a varied position split roughly 30% furniture coordination and 70% estimating support, working closely with our design, pre-construction and delivery teams. If you like the idea of a role where no two days look the same, one minute you’re in a showroom talking fabrics with a designer, the next you’re chasing a subcontractor for a quote, this could be the job for you.

What you’ll be doing

Part One: Furniture Coordination (approx. 30%)

This side of the role covers FF&E, furniture, fixtures, acoustics and feature lighting. You’ll get to know our suppliers and reps, keeping costing sheets, discount structures and our sample library up to date and easy to navigate. You’ll track lead times and price rises, flagging anything that could affect a live scheme before it becomes a problem, and support our designers in finding furniture that fits the brief, budget and building.

Quotations rarely stay still for long, so you’ll be creating, adjusting and reissuing them as designs develop, and bringing alternative ranges to the table so we’re never relying on a single supplier. There’s also a commercial side to it: presenting value-engineered options with the saving clearly stated, negotiating at order stage, and looking for opportunities to add value through fabric upgrades or extra pods.

On the delivery side, you’ll coordinate installations with the Project Manager, suppliers and site teams, support snagging at handover, chase remedials, and reconcile supplier invoices against purchase orders. Over time, you’ll build up towards accompanying clients at showrooms, writing up visits and minuting client meetings.

Part Two: Estimating Coordination (approx. 70%)

This is the measurable, chaseable, record-keeping backbone of pre-construction. You’ll assist with quantities and measurements taken from drawings, attend site surveys to record access constraints, and re-measure against every drawing revision as a project develops.

You’ll approach suppliers and subcontractors for rates, issue tender packs with clear return dates, and keep a returns tracker moving, chasing where needed and levelling returns onto a comparison sheet, flagging any exclusions or gaps along the way.

There’s a cost data and compliance element too: maintaining the project costing sheet and preliminaries schedules, version-controlling cost plans against drawing issues, and benchmarking final accounts against original estimates. You’ll complete vetting from our answer library, help assemble tender submissions, and support the onboarding of new subcontractors and suppliers, including chasing up compliance documents and renewals.

What we’re looking for

We’re not expecting you to arrive with years of experience in furniture or estimating, we’ll teach you that. What we are looking for is:

• Someone organised and comfortable chasing people, a lot of the value in this role is in the follow-up.
• Confidence with spreadsheets, and the ability to read and measure from drawings.
• A commercially curious mindset, able to spot where a specification change could save money without losing the design intent.
• Someone presentable and credible in front of clients, both at showrooms and on site.
• Eagerness, initiative, and a willingness to develop and get stuck in.
• A balance of design-mindedness and commercial awareness
• Patience, you may find yourself re-quoting the same job several times as things change, and that’s just part of the process.
• A full driving license and access to a car to attend supplier and client meetings.

The details

• Based at: Insight House, Pacific Road, Altrincham
• Working with: Design, pre-construction and delivery teams
• Level: Trainee,  no prior industry experience required
• Salary: Up to £30k
• Split: Roughly 30% furniture coordination / 70% estimating

What good looks like in this role

We measure success in the small, practical things that keep a project running smoothly: costing sheets and rates never more than a quarter out of date, no client quotation issued against an outdated drawing, subcontractor returns coming in on time and ready for the estimator, and furniture delivered to programme with snags closed within an agreed window.

If that sounds like the kind of role where you could grow, get involved in real projects from day one, and pick up a genuinely broad set of skills across furniture and estimating, we’d love to hear from you.

To apply please send your CV and cover letter to laura.slegg@officeinsight.co.uk