Since 2017, ABCA has been providing preventative maintenance, installations, emergency call-out and remedial works for fire and security systems for the Vue Cinema Group’s portfolio of over 91 sites throughout England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, to the value of approximately £1M per annum.
We work on a series of fire protection and security systems for Vue, one of the world’s leading cinema operators, with our Service Director, Steven Wales, coordinating its delivery.
13 qualified engineers are assigned to the relevant activity, supported by our bank of over 110 directly employed operatives working nationally, and a further three approved subcontractors work on the Irish sites.
For areas such as fire suppression systems, we are supported by specialist subcontractors, who must provide evidence of their competency, experience and accreditations for the discipline they work in to achieve ‘approved’ status. These subcontractors also have to act in accordance with our own policies to ensure the work they deliver meets our high standards, with their performance regularly monitored. We are able to compliantly work across these systems, completing all services and repairs, thanks to our various accreditations and the training and experience of our staff.
Service delivery is organised from our North West service desk by a regional team, comprised of the following:
- Two customer service agents – they log reactive requests on CASH to enable expedient allocation to a suitably qualified engineer.
- Two reactive service coordinators – they monitor jobs in real-time using a ‘live’ mapping system linked to CASH, allocating works to engineers based upon the scope of the work, an engineer’s skillset, and their proximity to each site.
- One preventative maintenance coordinator – this person directs planned works based upon the agreed programme produced by Steven, conducting hourly progress and welfare checks on engineers.
- Two service controllers – they review completed job reports from engineers for accuracy and consistency, and initiate any required remedial actions e.g. forwarding quotation requests for remedial works to our estimating team.
- One service supervisor – this person oversees controllers and coordinators to ensure contractual timescales are satisfied, acting as an initial escalation point for any issues, such as a need to deploy additional resources to satisfy a short-term peak in demand.
Any out-of-hours’ calls are automatically redirected to engineers, supported by an on-call supervisor, who are available to communicate with the client, key stakeholders and building managers, as required.
Our regional structure has been proven to help us satisfy an increased volume of reactive requests, without compromising the delivery of any planned works, and supports the provision of audited completion reports and quotations for remedial works within 24 hours of a visit.
Additionally, to eliminate any disruption to Vue’s customers, all planned preventative maintenance works and non-emergency repairs are scheduled outside of the times when the cinemas are open to the public.
The KPI’s agreed with Vue are continually measured and ABCA has an impressive track record of not just hitting them, but exceeding them. These include:
- Reactive repair call-outs completed within agreed timeframes – target of 90%, achieved 95%.
- Servicing compliance maintained over the last quarter – target of 95%, achieved 100%.
”“ABCA’s technical capability is exceptional. 35 years of experience really shows in the quality of their work. This is not an industry where you gamble with your choice of supplier. Appointing ABCA was a great decision.”
Mike FlintNational Facilities Manager at Vue
Vue is just one of over 100 of the UK’s largest companies that ABCA supplies with trusted fire and security protection. Contact us if you would like your business safeguarded too.
