Birmingham-based J S Wright has slashed the number of its operational processes by half to achieve a new internationally recognised management award.
The leading mechanical services provider, which recently launched a London office, is one of the first companies in its field to be awarded the certification for its integrated management system (IMS) by the global standards organisation BSI.
BSI assessed the firm against stringent standards, resulting in certifications for its quality, environmental, and health and safety management systems, before awarding it the new PAS 99 standard for a fully integrated management system.
The standards have helped J S Wright, a nationwide specialist contractor to the hotel, residential, student accommodation, commercial and leisure sectors, to enhance its customer focus by halving the number of operational processes that it requires.
An internal IMS team working with Worcester-based management system integration specialists Sapira LLP took less than year to complete the challenging programme.
Marcus Aniol, Managing Director of J S Wright, said: “This is an outstanding achievement and a tribute to our dedicated workforce all of whom, with the help of Sapira, have contributed to the process of streamlining our business to enable us to meet the needs of our customers even more efficiently.”
He added: “The consistency that this certification has brought to all areas of our business will make it easier for all staff to understand how we operate as we continue to build on our standing as one of the UK’s leading mechanical services contractors.”
The integrated systems approach slashed the number of processes and documents used across the company by more than 50 per cent from 180 to just 84, reducing the firm’s impact on the environment and enabling more time to be devoted to serving customers.
John Osborne, EMEA Sector Marketing Manager for BSI, said: “J S Wright has demonstrated the highest standards of management practices as one of the first companies in the UK to be certified to all four standards. Achieving all this in just one year is all the more commendable – and the even-greater focus that it can now place on serving customers should keep the company in good stead for years to come.”
Toby Guise, J S Wright’s IMS Manager, said: “With Sapira support, we held workshops with all our departments to see what actual documents and processes were needed and those that weren’t. Success has been most marked on site where foremen can now concentrate on managing their site rather than pushing paperwork for up to three hours a day.”
J S Wright originally decided to strive for the quality, environmental and health and safety certifications before Sapira, appointed to help it through the programme, encouraged the company to pursue an integrated approach to all its systems.
Mark East, Managing Partner of Sapira, said: “Many at J S Wright were worried that the implementation of the Sapira-IMS integrated management system would create more work, especially as we discovered that staff were already drowning in paperwork.”
Phil Heath, Sapira’s IMS specialist, said: “The decision by J S Wright to appoint a dedicated management system manager in Tony Guise provided the necessary drive and initiative as we set out a route map to certification which began with a gap analysis against the PAS 99 integrated management specification that showed the company to be 52% compliant against all the standards sought.”
An internal IMS team was established under the leadership of Toby Guise comprising CAD Supervisor Simon Bevin, Contracts Supervisor Stephanie Coffey, Birmingham Office Manager Sandra Holmes and London Office Manager Christine Wiesztort.
Initially chaired by Sapira, the team actioned issues and mitigated non-conformances, implemented the mandatory documents and processes, and carried out a comprehensive internal audit with the help of Sapira’s own Dynamic Aspect Register software (see sapira-ims.com) before opening up the company to a successful audit by BSI.
J S Wright’s design and build capabilities have resulted in major UK-wide projects from a £10million deal to equip the Mint Hotel Tower of London to fitting out 50 hotels for the Accor Group including the first combined Ibis and Etap at Birmingham Airport.
* J S Wright has been short-listed for the H&V News Contractor of the Year award for the second year running after clinching the top industry award last year.
