Meridian Utilities

Since the inception of the ‘Superbundle Contract’ Team Solutionz has been invaluable. The fact that Team Solutionz are on-site and readily available allows changes to be made, problems solved and advice sought without delay, directly contributing to the overall success of the contract. – Maggie Thomson (General Manager)

The Challenge

Meridian Utilities were awarded a £50 million contract to provide maintenance services to NI Water. As part of the tendering process for this contract Meridian placed significant emphasis on introducing IT Systems and Controls, and enhanced reporting for NI Water.

The commitments and requirements for Meridian are summarised as follows:

To provide job controls to manage all work orders, including scheduling, work in progress (WIP), and invoicing of work across a number of different contract areas.
• Management of digital photographs.
• Remote working and collaboration across a number of sites, including the ability for systems to replicate and communicate with each other.
• Provide NI Water with high visibility financial reporting and KPI reports.
• Provide Meridian with Business Intelligence reports in order to assist key decision making.
• Create a mobile work management system.
• Provide backup and disaster recover solutions.

The Solution

In order to implement and provide the required solutions this project not only required leading edge technological solutions, but more importantly a deep understanding of the business and NI Water contract. With the critical timeframe of the project, it was also important to project manage the work, manage client expectations and prioritise work with realistic time scales for completion.

In understanding the business, Team Solutionz has been able to create a number of bespoke job control systems to meet our clients’ control and reporting requirements. With the business understanding gained upfront, Team Solutionz was able to create a generic control system that was easy to modify for each of the control systems, providing a more cost effective and more rapid solution.

In addition Team Solutionz set-up a helpdesk system to support the new control systems. Team Solutionz’ proactive and analytical approach to the helpdesk system has resulted in projects and procedures being introduced in order to reduce support and ultimately save money through process automation.

With the rapid expansion of Meridian, Team Solutionz had to install a new LAN and upgrade the internet to ensure the IT infrastructure could meet the demands of the growing business. In addition, Team Solutionz managed the backup and disaster recovery of the newly created systems.

The Result

Meridian’s Control systems are now receiving, scheduling and processing all work orders from NI Water. Extensive reporting has been developed for both NI Water and Meridian, enabling our client to make fully informed decisions. Our client is able to view WIP at any time, and has detailed cost analysis on each squad and area of the business, providing critical information on company performance.

The Mobile Work Management system implemented has greatly benefited Meridian Utilities, providing them with improved control over squads and more efficient data transfer/updates, decreasing the level of administration required at the Meridian headquarters.

Team Solutionz also provided a complete solution from inception, development, implementation and support. In addition Team Solutionz implemented necessary infrastructure changes in order for our client to meet their contractual obligations.