The client
Age UK is the country’s largest charity dedicated to help people make the most of later life. It has a network of over 430 shops, with more than 75,000 volunteers, and is present on many high streets.
Age UK also operates internationally in over 40 countries worldwide.
The challenge
Age UK approached Astral in mid-2014.
They needed help to ensure compliance across their 430+ shop estate, including fire alarm, emergency lights, fire extinguishers and PAT testing.
The challenge was to deliver the project in a 6-8 week period.
The one-stop-shop
Astral grouped the shops and warehouses into geographical areas and established a specific engineer team to deal with each area.
The teams were tasked with producing a plan for completion based on the client’s timescales. The whole exercise was run by a dedicated project manager.
As each visit was completed a compliance certificate for each discipline was automatically sent by smartphone to our Service Management System (SMS) and then uploaded to the client’s own web portal.
Our project manager regularly updated the client on progress and remedial work was carried out during the inspections, to avoid repeat visits, based on a pre-agreed schedule of rates.
The whole exercise was completed within the time scales set by Age UK, who then asked Astral to help deliver a similar fixed wire testing project in a smaller number of shops, again with a tight timescale. This was also completed to plan.
