After a year of change in 2014 that saw us re-focus on our core strength of specialist Water Quality Engineering services, we are now aiming to extend our reputation as industry leaders.
To show appreciation to our team for the hard work completed in 2014, we held our latest quarterly ‘all staff‘ communication day at Xtreme Karting in Edinburgh. The day comprised of morning presentations, reviewing 2014 performance and 2015 priorities before the whole company took part in a team Le Mansa style endurance race in the afternoon.
In addition to the usual in-house presentations, the event also included some shared best practise thinking from Simon Cyhanko of Northumbrian Water Group. Jim Panton explained the driver for Simon’s attendance, “We have always lived by the mantra that we must align our services to meet the current and future needs of our clients, to this end we thought it would offer great benefit for our whole team to hear what challenges are faced on a daily basis directly from a key client.“
“We have known Simon for a number of years through our shared involvement in the regional committees of the Institute of Water and we’ve seen his presentation elsewhere before. The measures NWG are taking to ensure they deliver the highest quality water to their customers through some simple but very effective techniques, with the focus at NWG to be the National Leaders, really struck a chord with us.“
“It was great to see how these low tech and low-cost initiatives such as ‘Treat It Right‘, the ‘Treated Water Charter’ and ‘See It/Seal It‘ have been embraced by the wider NWGteam leading to their staff taking increased pride in their work, and their workplace. This closely matches how we share ownership for business improvement with our staff.“
“At our previous quarterly session the theme was ‘Marginal Gainsa‘, each team member was given the opportunity to identify and to drive forward a small but important change within the business. Progress on these tasks has been fantastic, and by aggregating these small improvements we have seen a real benefit in terms of efficiency, quality and safety.
Simon added “It was great to be asked to contribute to the day, Panton McLeod has always been very supportive to the Institute of Water and additionally when I have required their services directly they are always responsive while showing empathy for our needs as clients. Therefore it was great to be able to give something back.”
“Meeting the whole team was also a great experience, over the years I have had experience of their Robotic and Confined Space teams at different times and know some of their management team through events such as the Institute of Water national conference.”
Jim added, “Involving our clients in these communication days has proven to be very popular and successful during 2014 and we now aim to use this model for all future sessions where appropriate. During 2014 Scottish Water Operational and H&S staff shared their priorities and challenges and we believe we were then able to improve our service provision based on these needs.“
“After the presentations had been completed it was time for a little fun, we split into ten teams each comprising of three or four drivers for the 70-minute endurance race. Each team was required to make a minimum of seven rolling driver changes and the team with the highest number of laps were crowned as 2015 Panton McLeod Le Mans Champions. The race was extremely close and after some forceful driving by our CEO in the closing stages – penalised with a questionable time penalty – Team 2 came out as the worthy winners. Thanks to Simon for his help on the day and well done to everyone involved, especially my winning teammates, Mick, Nigel and Steven.”
For more information, contact the team on 01896 663 330 or email info@pantonmcleod.co.uk
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