Milton Keynes City Council
Mechanical & Electrical Specialist Services and Gas Installations
A product of the new town’s movement in 1967, today Milton Keynes is one of Britain’s fastest growing cities, with a global reputation for smart city projects, from delivery robots to electric cars. This thriving urban centre sits alongside market towns and rural areas, with much of the borough connected by grid roads, pedestrian and cycling ‘Redways’. Around 35% of Milton Keynes is green space. It is the Council’s aim to be carbon zero by 2030.
Milton Keynes City Council runs more than 250 services from waste collection to highways maintenance. Around two thirds of its £200m budget goes into care and support for vulnerable adults and children. The council’s organisational values are, “we are dedicated, we are respectful, and we are collaborative.”
The Milton Keynes Council Estates Department manage a diverse property portfolio encompassing leisure, schools, commercial and corporate landlord stock. The repair and maintenance obligations differ for the various stock types and leasehold responsibilities.
The Council has full maintenance responsibility for the corporate properties including reactive, quoted, planned, best practice and statutory compliance obligations.
About the Tender
JCW were made aware of a contract renewal for Milton Keynes, by an existing relationship. The tender, was a 3-month long process, with JCW being awarded the following Lots:
• Mechanical, Electrical and Specialist Services: Reactive, quoted and planned/compliance works for three specialist sites, Civic Offices, Brookland Health Centre and Whitehouse Health Centre.
• Gas Installations: Reactive, quoted and planned/compliance services for the satellite Corporate Landlord portfolio.
The contract award was subject to a formal approval process by the Council.
Scope Description
“MKC are looking to form a transparent and open relationship with all their appointed suppliers. This transparency requires all costs and performance data to be clearly visible on a site-by-site basis.”
Details
Milton Keynes City Council (MKC) looked to appoint competent, approved suppliers to support their helpdesk for specialist elements of mechanical, electrical and gas works.
It is a mandatory requirement that a 24/7 Helpdesk coverage is offered, for times of genuine emergencies. Approved suppliers must have the capability to respond and resolve such calls.
Disciplines Covered:
All mechanical and electrical building services including specialist services.
Order Types:
Reactive, Quoted, Planned and Compliance Services.
Sites:
3 Standalone Specialist Sites plus a Network of Satellite Corporate Landlord Portfolio.
Mandatory Accreditations:
Gas Safe Registration
Member of the NICEIC
SSIP Accreditation
All activities are to be tightly controlled by the service provider to ensure that all processes and procedures are continually met.
The 60-day day mobilisation period consisted of an Initial Programme Meeting, Pre- Contract Meetings, Pre-Contract Process Training/Workshop, Pre-Contract TF Training and H&S Pre-Qualification.
All exercises were completed at MKC’s Civic Office with the Supplier Account Manager.
Quick Glance
Contract Term: 3 years
Annual Value: c £250k
Team Consists of:
Contract Manager
Contract Administrator
Managed Services
Helpdesk
Dedicated Engineers
Project Team
Maintenance Tasks: 1,200 per annum
Reactive Tasks: 150 per annum
Projects Works: 5
CAFM System: tfCloud
No of Sites:
44 Civic Buildings
Corporate Office
Community, Family and Health Centres
No. Engineers: 6 Inducted Engineers
Delivered Services:
Annual service and inspection of gas installations
Services and inspection of fire alarm installations
Test and inspection of emergency lighting installations
Portable appliance testing
Service and inspection of firefighting equipment
Inspection of the electrical fixed wire installations
Annual test and inspection of lightning protection systems
Annual service and inspection (SFG20) of the air conditioning (AC), including F-Gas certification
Undertake TM44 energy inspections (AC plant)
Service lifting equipment
Maintenance for lifts and escalators according to manufacturer’s recommendations
Service and inspection of auto doors
Service and inspection of roller shutters
Our Contract Manager added:
“One challenge with the Milton Keynes City Council contract is accessing care homes and health centres within the portfolio. To overcome this, the Royston Service and Managed Services teams ensure that arrangements are made to the exact requirements of each individual site, with engineers attending at the time stated, to ensure disruption to site based staff workloads is kept to a minimum.
Due to the nature of these types of sites, we ensure first fix rates are as high as possible, also ensuring swift turnarounds regarding quoted repair works to ensure critical plant is non-operational for as little time as possible.”
Our Delivery
Milton Keynes City Council is a demanding and sophisticated customer that engages a strategic consultant to support their team. The tender was won through a formal competitive tender process.
JCW provide full mechanical and electrical maintenance services for assets within the Civic Offices and Health Centres. In addition to the contract, JCW also maintain the combustion appliances for the council’s community centres, halls, family, children, and care centres.
Our Team
We supply a resident multiskilled engineer to the main civic building and provide mobile engineer support for the outlying sites, including holiday cover.
Contract Management
This contract is managed from our Southeast office in Royston, with regional support from the Midlands Engineers. One Contract Manager is responsible for the overall success of this contract and the Board responsibility lies with the Managing Director, based at the same office. To ensure a transparent and open relationship, face to face review meetings take place monthly with the Council.
Multi-skilled Engineers
During mobilisation we inducted the TUPE transferred engineer and provided additional technical training at our training centre in Leicester, thus providing the customer with increased benefits and positively engaging with our new engineer.
JCW also provide dedicated contract management and Helpdesk services, from which both managers attend monthly meetings. They have specific responsibilities regarding this contract, and both have strong relationships with the clients’ staff.
Helpdesk
This team is also based in the Southeast office with the Contract Manager. They support our engineers in the field by means of tasking and scheduling, documentation support and management. The accurate completion and submission of “paperwork” is an essential part of their work.
On-site Team
Our resident engineer meets with MKC representatives regularly, sometimes on a daily basis, to discuss any operational improvements or issues, as and when they arise.
Site engineer presence, as well as nominated mobile engineers, provide full cover for the Council premises.
To improve cost effectiveness, our team of site inducted engineers, work to gain site familiarity, experience, and relationships, which allow for quicker diagnose and completion of repairs.
Championing New Systems
The MKC Estates Department operate within an in-house Facilities Management team. Central to this function is the MKC FM Helpdesk. This Helpdesk sits at the heart of the FM operation and controls all work types delivered across the property portfolio. The Helpdesk operates a specific CAFM system, which is intrinsic to the success of our operation.
The contract required JCW to use this CAFM software and at mobilisation we engaged with the customer’s consultant to undergo training on the new system and within the first month we nominated “champions” within our team.
Contract Progress
To date, the planned preventative maintenance is running smoothly and exceeding the customers’ expectations for service levels, service delivery and F-Gas compliance.
Investment
This case study demonstrates our willingness to embrace TUPE, invest and train existing teams, and offer tailor-made services to meet our clients’ statutory, operational, critical, and financial needs.
Monitor satisfaction
Based on our customer relationship, continuous feedback and satisfaction monitoring, we believe that our open book approach has been vital throughout this tender process, to successfully secure the contract.
Along with our client collaboration, flexibility and contract performance, our honest and clear approach has been a vital factor in the continuing client satisfaction.
Breath of Fresh Air
Since going live in 2022, our customer has been very positive in our service delivery and relationship building, stating “JCW are a breath of fresh air!”
We are extremely proud of this contract win and mobilisation and will continue to invest our time and initiative to provide MKC with an exceptional level of service.
Need to learn more about national maintenance? Download of our content below, or get in touch:
About JCW
We provide complete project management, installation, in-house maintenance and tailored managed solutions to a broad range of clients across the UK.
We are a national mechanical and electrical building service provider, offering integrated planned preventative, as well as reactive maintenance services across all property portfolios.
We have history dating back to 1903 and today JCW remain unique, as we not only employ over 250 dedicated staff, we also offer mechanical and electrical services with an equal amount of engineers within each discipline. This means that we can self deliver hard services nationally through our mobile engineering workforce, as well as provide full project management and installation services through our network of offices: Leicester, Cambridge, Cardiff, Bristol, Leeds, Ipswich, Plymouth and Edinburgh.
Our offices are strategically placed and take ownership of their areas customers to provide a fast, reliable, localised service. Our engineers are fully qualified, have a wealth of experience, are accommodating and genuinely care about the work they conduct and the service they provide.
Related Services:
