Term services

We have a very successful and proven track record in providing term services as well as formal and informal alliances with a wide range of clients in many different forms. These range from long-term relationships, working on many projects competitively tendered, to formal agreements, where we have personnel permanently based on a client’s site integrated into their organisation.

Our clients are increasingly seeing the benefits these bring in terms of working relationships and cost-effective working. Recent agreements range from a few thousand pounds to over £6 million per year.

In all cases, we measure and benchmark performance to ensure continuous delivery of value for money. In formal agreements where we agree performance criteria and analyse these with our clients, we regularly achieve scores well in excess of 100%.

Our success in providing such services has been recognised by the industry resulting in our receiving the first ACTIVE award for best practice on a term services commission in 2004. ECI ACTIVE (Achieving Competitiveness Through Innovation and Value Enhancement) is a European Construction Institute initiative which seeks to improve the overall performance of engineering projects.

We appoint a Services Manager for formal agreements. He is responsible to a member of a client management team and to a senior member of our own management team for working relationships and agreed procedures to assure the highest level of service:

Implementation: we use a structured approach to define the client brief or problem statement, the scope of each project and its how it will be undertaken
Correct resourcing: we ensure that resources are allocated to ensure the right mix of site knowledge, technical expertise and workload
Communications and reviews are carried out: the service manager remains the one main point of contact for the client to ensure that there is good day-to-day communication between team members and client personnel. He is also responsible for formal work reviews on a weekly, monthly, biannual and annual basis
Performance is measured: we monitor and benchmark performance against standards agreed with clients to ensure all parties are satisfied. Many clients like to link our performance to some kind of incentive involving shared savings.