Coping with the unexpected
Published: 24 January, 2014
An electrical contractor needed a way of managing emergency call outs alongside routine activities. PWE reports.
Keeping on top of providing week round service response for routine maintenance, repairs and emergency call-outs is a high priority says Jaylec, an electrical contracting services company. Its clients, range from large local authorities through to housing associations and construction companies, typically the company would manage more than 1000 maintenance work orders every month. Therefore it is vital the team of more than 20 specialist electrical engineers have a clear, well-organised work plan which enables them to deliver effective services, often at short notice, to customers, and to have an accurate, up-to-date overview of jobs in progress.
Many of its clients run their own work scheduling systems. Customer teams receive the initial contact reporting a problem and then pass this information on to Jaylec for action. These unscheduled demands, often for emergency or breakdown repairs, need to be fitted in with the programme of routine and scheduled maintenance work.
This requires a highly sophisticated facilities management system, which can offer speed and security, as well as the ability to prioritise and schedule work effectively. The system needs to not only be easily accessible by the Jaylec team, but also by its clients so they can keep track of the progress reports on their jobs.
To meet all these needs, Jaylec needed to find a secure computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) which would be accessible via web browsers so that the engineering team could keep on top of the workload and respond to urgent demands wherever they were. Jason Jarrard, managing director at Jaylec commented: “We were looking for something that would cover everything we needed – a convenient, easy to use, universal system. When we looked around the various solutions available on the market, Agility was the only one that ticked all our boxes.”
Agility is accessed via a secure website with log in validation providing user-specific functionality. This means that clients can run their own reports to ensure they have the latest data on speed and quality of service, as well as early warnings of any potential issues. “As soon as each job is reported, it is our responsibility to make sure it is done. We have service levels to meet for each of our customers, and the reporting tools within Agility help us both to keep track of KPIs (key performance indicators) and agreed standards. Giving our customers the opportunity to log in themselves and see what is happening in real time is a great bonus,” said Jason. “Agility is definitely the way forward – as consumers’ and clients’ expectations of the service levels they should be receiving grow, it is increasingly important for our customers that they can provide up-to-date progress reports and that is where Agility is one step ahead of the competition.”
Agility is a comprehensive maintenance management solution. It allows instant tracking of all live work orders and also offers the potential for all kinds of other benefits such as improved response times, better customer service, and tighter control over spare parts and inventory management. It also allows the company to prioritise and schedule repairs and requests into daily and weekly rotas for the maintenance team.
For further information please visit: www.getagility.com
