Derby City Council

Challenge

Derby City Council’s diverse portfolio of 120 properties includes nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, children’s and adult residential homes and secure accommodation, leisure buildings, libraries, museums, administrative offices, markets, crematorium and cemeteries, public conveniences and car parks.

The service we provide for Derby City Council includes all aspects of mechanical maintenance across this portfolio, including statutory inspections, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.

The provision of mechanical and electrical maintenance is split between three contractors and divided by the cluster of properties.

Solution

Derby City Council are supported by a contract manager, contract supervisor and our local team of 10 mobile engineers that are available to support. Outside of normal office hours, a call-out facility is provided which gives us a quick response to the Council’s needs.

We operate a fully trained Service desk, contactable by phone and email, on a 24/7/365 basis. This facility provides our customer with a centralised point of contract via a dedicated telephone number and email address. The Service desk also provides ‘out of hours’ support for Derby City Council who on occasion require urgent works to be undertaken. This includes those which need a presence on site within the agreed response times as part of our performance framework agreement with the authority.

Our team have faced many challenges throughout our relationship. These include:

• Ten Month Year: Derby City Council have recently moved to a ten-month maintenance year system, meaning that all maintenance is undertaken between April and January, leaving February and March free of spending. This allows the Council to collate all their costs and agree final spending before the end of the financial year.
  
  
• Listed Buildings: A number of the properties are Listed Buildings under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, located within Conservation Areas or of Special Historic or Architectural interest.
  
  
• Vetting of Employees: Due to the nature of some of the buildings and their occupants for example schools, nurseries and children’s homes, all Mitie engineers working on the contract are fully DBS checked and cleared.

Outcome

In addition to generating savings through our self-delivery of services, our achievements include:

Responding at Short Notice: Since 2016, our key achievement has been the ability of our mobile team to respond to reactive call outs at short notice and complete most of the work in the timeframes agreed within our contract SLAs.

Renovation of Council House: Of the three mechanical and electrical maintenance contractors, Mitie were awarded the renovation project of Council House – Derby City Council’s main building. This is a listed building meaning that all work had to be planned thoroughly, we had to apply for permits and plans given permission before work could start. This process started in 2014 and the works were completed in late 2017.

Continued Support: Our teams are also working with the Council wherever possible to suggest innovations and replacements that will result in efficiencies and long-term savings. We support other contractors wherever possible and regularly communicate with the Council to help them prioritise essential maintenance work.