Emergency Response – Like waiting for a bus!

Most people involved in the UK water industry understand the expectation to maintain supplies to customers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year without fail. The public can take this for granted but it is no mean feat, and to achieve this water companies must rely on a supply chain which shares its goals and values.

This spirit of collaboration has always been part of our philosophy, the mantra that “our clients problems will become our shared problems“ was installed into the business from inception by founder Jim R Panton and continues today (20 years or 4 AMP periods later) under the guidance of his son and current CEO Jim W Panton.

However, the requirement to respond to specific emergencies situations cannot be predicted. From experience, in general, they only occur a few times a year, but just like waiting for a bus, three can come along all at once!

With the 3rd weekend in October upon us, our staff are hoping for a quiet Friday today, as over the past two weekends they have responded to three separate emergency call outs, and as a result have helped some of their key clients maintain water supplies of the highest quality to the public across the UK.

The first call out occurred on the 2nd of October when a client required a key service reservoir (storage in excess of 60 million litres) to be cleaned and returned to service as soon as possible after the completion of some remedial works.

Crews were scrambled from the company’s Galashiels head office in the Scottish Borders and were in attendance for 2-3 days and into the weekend, but within days two more emergency situations had arisen.

The second required a team to attend a critical water treatment works over the weekend of 11th and 12th Oct 2014 where a partial plant shut down had reduced output capacity. Unusually the company had a couple of days to prepare, and teams from both the Nottingham and Caerphilly office were lined up to attend.

Then on the afternoon of Friday 10th with only hours before teams were about to deploy a third emergency situation arose, this time a smaller water treatment works required one of its assets cleaning at extremely short notice to ensure supplies were maintained.

With crews already allocated from Nottingham and Caerphilly, and the Galashiels teams enjoying a well-deserved rest after the previous weekend’s excitement the company needed to think fast to ensure their client’s need were met.

Additional staff from the South Shields office were deployed to support the already allocated teams and by the end of the weekend, both projects had been completed protecting supplies.

Jim Panton was delighted with the company’s response “The successful completion of these projects relied on three of our key strengths, firstly our staff, their skills and attitude were fantastic, we would like to thank them for again demonstrating that they share our core values.

Secondly the depth and range of our equipment which are located across the UK at our four office locations and is in our opinion, second to none, especially as it is dedicated to potable water works.

Finally, our cloud-based IT systems which allowed the works to be planned and delivered safely at extremely short notice with the critical information being available to the teams at all times.

For more information about how Panton McLeod supply the UK and Ireland with their unique mix of ‘Water Quality Engineering‘ services please contact the team at info@pantonmcleod.co.uk or call 01896 663 330.

Or for 24/7 emergency response please call the main switchboard number 01896 663 330.