Amey is one of the top five support services suppliers in the UK. They employ 16,000 people and have a turnover of around £2.1bn. Amey maintains the UK’s road and rail infrastructure, keeps schools safe and clean, manages the UK’s defence estate, safely escorts prisoners and keeps prisons and courts secure. They also collect and process waste, as well as deliver utilities services.
Amey has a couple of PFI schools contracts in Scotland, located in Renfrewshire, Edinburgh and Glasgow. They were receiving an inordinately high number of requests on the help desk system for one particular contract. Some were for routine maintenance and breakdown issues, however a lot were for what could be described as defects and minor issues that were not affecting the day to day operation and use of the school. The large volume was detracting from the ability to deliver a genuine service, however as a result, significant penalty deductions were being incurred. ACE was engaged to analyse the situation and advise on the way forward.
We commenced the assignment by reviewing the contractual requirements and obligations of the payment mechanism and summarised these.
We then analysed all the help desk logs for the period in question and assessed each entry against the Service Level Agreement and contract time scales. This analysis was then summarised in a report on the findings to show what actions were compliant with the contract and which were not.
As a result of the analysis and our findings, Amey had a better understanding of what was happening and how they could manage the situation better. They were also able to discuss the issues with the client in a more constructive way.
