How Facilities Management Works For Multiple Sites

With a long history of facilities management behind us, we have built up a wide and varied client base – not just in terms of the different types of work involved, but also the size and standing of the companies we work with too. Whether it's a brand-new start-up, right through to national and even multinational organisations, each bring their unique requirements and challenges. This means that our services should be shaped to scale – presenting bespoke workplace solutions for any type of company, of any size.

A great example of this has been our work for Virgin Media. Over the last 14 years, we have supported their facilities and property maintenance review programme throughout the UK – helping to support its workforce as it expanded.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, new safe-working measures were required, so we quickly got to work, supporting Virgin Media's COVID clear desk process to ensure a safe and functional environment going forward. Read onto find out more about this work, which will give you an insight into how multiple locations can be managed with a single service.

Project Information and Implementation.

During the first COVID lockdown employee desks were cleared of all items (including some personal possessions) to allow for the regular enhanced cleaning which was required.

Desks were photographed, items on the desks were bagged up and placed in a box and then the box was labelled with the desk number as an identifier before being stored on site. With a larger scale return to office imminent and the clear desk policy to be maintained Virgin Media looked to close out this process by returning any personal items to the correct employee before disposing of all remaining items.

Virgin Media have taken this opportunity to reinforce the clear desk/agile working policy by removing all personal storage including under desk drawer pedestals and lockers. These will again require the sorting and disposal of all contents before the furniture itself is recycled. This trialling process originally took place on their two Manchester sites – which was a success. As such, the clear desk plan was rolled out across all their sites; our facilities management tasks included:

• Locating employees' personal items in the stored boxes.
• Returning these personal items to the individuals.
• Sorting remaining boxed items into waste categories and disposing of them. accordingly. Waste was segregated into WEEE, Confidential Waste, Mixed Waste, Food & Metal.
• Sorting contents of lockers and drawers into waste categories and disposing of them accordingly.
• Recycling of lockers and drawer pedestals.

All the work took place during June 2021, with all locations being left clear ready for employees to return to the office. Virgin Media were delighted with the swiftness and ease of how the tasks were carried out, giving them plenty of time to ready for the 'new normal' at this particularly challenging time.