Mobilising Legionella Contracts
By Lauren Whittington, Legionella Services Manager
“A great onboarding process is a vital first step in offering our customers the best possible service, on their journey towards legionella compliance”, explains Lauren, she adds that “once we receive an initial enquiry from a potential client, our technical salesperson speaks to them the same day, to find out about any legionella compliance issues and service requirements”.
Then, the account manager arranges to visit your site(s), if required, to carry out a site survey at a time and date to suit you, before putting a quote and a compliance action plan together to help your site(s) become legionella compliant.
This could involve setting up a compliance monitoring schedule, or ensuring initial legionella risk assessments are carried out to assess any non-conformance with follow up remedial action to ensure compliance.
Once a quote has been accepted, we will process and send confirmation, before holding an internal onboarding meeting, depending on the size of the project. For example, for a new client with over 500 assets, we might organise an asset mapping project before the monitoring takes place.
Often, we will also arrange an on-site onboarding meeting with the client, with representation from our technical sales team, our field management team, the team leader managing the project day-to-day from the site(s) and the lead from our internal service delivery team. This allows us to ensure that we and our client are on the same page, we have the same expectations and the same priorities.
We would then have a second internal onboarding meeting to discuss the program of works and, once agreed, we would start.
Some things we might consider at this point are:
- Best dates/ times to attend to minimise disruption on-site
- Keys access
- Site access: consider if there are at-risk people on site- all our surveying teams have enhanced DBS
- If security clearance is required (depending on what clearance is required, we can action security passes, MOD level passes, airside passes etc. Our HR Administrator is an airport signatory for almost all main airports across the UK.)
- Discussion around minimising any of the site contact’s concerns
- Put together a plan of works in agreement with the client
- Appoint a lead surveyor on all sites, with a contingency plan in place
Building the relationship with the client from the start – involving not only the account manager from the sales side, but also having an onboarding plan ensures we give the best possible customer service from start to completion, which includes:
- Asset mapping service for large sites
- Consistency on site
- Giving clients training on our portal and system to enable them to close down non-conformances they have actioned
- 24/ 7 support – including out-of-hours emergency number to call
- Regular review meetings
We have recently restructured our internal support teams to ensure we can dedicate more resources at the start of a contract to onboard successfully and develop an informative program of works which can be used as a summary document to aid in review meetings.
We follow an onboarding process at Swiftclean, which covers all bases from quoting to delivery and review of service, this equips us to handle efficient and effective mobilisation of new water contracts.
Case Study:
In February, we won a large multi-building Legionella maintenance contract in Northwest London. From National Sales Manager David Randlesome and Technical Sales Consultant Aaron Whiting, receiving the enquiry and quoting; through to mobilising the contract, (at which point Lauren Whittington our Service Delivery Manager for Water Services got involved); with on-site lead Richard Crews our Legionella Risk Assessor; the Swiftclean team worked together with the client to ensure a smooth transition from their previous contractor.
This inter-departmental input from both sales and service delivery included internal and on-site meetings. It allowed us to manage the client’s and our own expectations and enabled us to deliver this service and aid the client with their legionella compliance as effectively and efficiently as possible.
In April, on the first day of the contract, the sales and field management team attended with the site lead to ensure that the assets could be mapped and to aid the smooth onboarding of the contract.
One of the client’s concerns around previous compliance was that they were unsure what their assets were on site. This was due to the incumbent not providing a clear asset record. The client was therefore unaware of the action needed to ensure all assets were legionella compliant moving forward.
We immediately began creating an asset schedule on our compliance system, ensuring that our client had full visibility of their assets through their personal client portal page. Additionally, our client was able to take corrective actions and update their records as needed to ensure their ongoing compliance.
