Novus has completed works on has completed refurbishment of the Edinburgh Tool Library – Novus Property Solutions
A news round-up of stories in the FM sector
Organisation: Novus Property Solutions
Partnership: Places for People
Service: The national maintenance and compliance contractor has completed refurbishment works on the Edinburgh Tool Library – the latest recipient of its Build Back Better initiative – in partnership with Places for People.
Description: The library operates in the same way as a normal library, but distributes tools rather than books. It allows the public to borrow a variety of tools including drills and sanders, as well as hosting a range of classes and workshops where members of the community can learn and take part in non-tool-related sessions including for mental health.
Details: The Build Back Better challenge supports charities, community projects and vulnerable people under the three key themes of reducing poverty, good health and wellbeing, and environmental action. As part of the initiative, Novus is encouraging its colleagues, clients, supply chain and the wider community to nominate deserving causes across the UK to receive funding – with Edinburgh Tool Library chosen to be a challenge winner by the contractor’s review panel. For details, visit: The Build Back Better Challenge | Novus Property Solutions (novussolutions.co.uk)
Organisation: Andron Facilities Management
Service: Menopause Training and Policy
Description: The company has introduced a menopause policy and menopause awareness training to help affected employees. A recent survey by the Fawcett Society shows that one in 10 women who have worked while going through menopause has left a job because of symptoms. It also found that 14% of women had reduced their hours at work, 14% had gone part-time and 8% had not applied for promotion.
Details: This commitment forms part of the company‘s wider strategy to improve gender equality. It says raising awareness about menopause symptoms and having the correct support in place will make it easier for our employees to open up and discuss how menopause is affecting their health and their work.
Organisation: ESS
Service: the Defence, Energy and Government Services sector of Compass Group UK & Ireland.
Announcement: ESS has introduced its Coffee House Express brand into the ‘Radio School Café’ at RAF Cosford. The model incorporates self-service technology and customer hosts to deliver benefits such as faster customer flow, extended opening times and an increased range.
Description: The outlet offers a range of hot and cold food, prepared in-house to grab and go, alongside a variety of hot and cold drinks. There are two self-service tills for payment, enabling the ESS team to host customers on the café floor and ensure products are readily available.
Details: The new model has resulted in much faster service times, with customer flow around three times quicker than it was previously. This is particularly important in this location where more than 200 service personnel undertaking training leaves classes at the same time for a 25-minute break.
Organisation: Kingdom Group
Service: Kingdom Integrated Solutions is an integrated and dual solutions offering to help companies streamline their facilities management and recruitment processes.
Description: Kingdom Integrated Solutions (KIS) brings together all of the people services offered by Kingdom Group’s 10 companies under one provider. These include hybrid security solutions – that combine personnel and technology – as well as local authority support, cleaning, recruitment, training and healthcare services.
Details: KIS delivers a holistic view of how each of its customers operates and an understanding of their exact people service requirements. KIS customers have one point of contact, one monthly invoice and collaborative working with one market-leading partner that has clarity of commercial goals and responsibility to deliver them.
Organisation: dormakaba
Announcement: Security and entrance system solutions supplier dormakaba has extended its revolving door portfolio with the KTV ATRIUM FLEX.
Description: the new KTV ATRIUM FLEX features dormakaba’s KT FLEX Direct Drive System, the first of its kind purposely designed for revolving doors. Tested for 2 million cycles, the drive is housed in the door’s ceiling and uses contactless magnetic fields instead of conventional belts and gears to propel the door panels. As such, the product is extremely durable and the need for a floor pit is eliminated.
Details: As a full glass structure, dormakaba’s solution features heat-soaked tempered glazing coupled with minimal framing ensures optimum transparency and visual appeal. The door is certified for passage height specification up to an impressive 4,000mm and up to 3,000mm in diameter.
Organisation: Opti-Twin, a sister company of Leeds-based major building physics engineering consultancy Yonder.
Announcement: Opti-Twin has launched an energy management platform for non-domestic users to cut utility bills and carbon emissions by 25 per cent within a year.
Description: The platform allows future energy consumption to be optimised, forecast and controlled much more accurately than before, as it analyses each building’s usage data against its own ideal level, derived from detailed, state-of-the-art modelling. Opti-Twin translates these comparisons into understandable and actionable insights.
Details: The energy use of most non-commercial premises is currently monitored by traditional building energy management or building management systems (known as BeMS and BMS). Opti-Twin complements these systems or acts as a replacement for cloud-based platforms, broadly similar to BeMS and BMS. It includes features such as users, functionality, datapoints and dashboards, which can be corporately branded easily, are added simply. In addition, manual input is straightforward but not essential.”
Organisation: BaxterStorey
Partnership: Waste Knot
Announcement: The hospitality and contract caterer has joined forces with the vegetable rescue body to get surplus veg out of farmers’ fields and into its chefs’ kitchens.
Description: The partnership will challenge BaxterStorey chefs to create innovative dishes from scratch using fresh, locally grown, seasonal ingredients, as well as supporting Waste Knot’s mission of providing a new market for its growers.
Details: Greg Bramwell, BaxterStorey’s director of food, said that partnering with Waste Knot encourages its chefs to be inspired to explore innovative ways of cooking with all parts of the plant as well as completely new ingredients – not only reducing food waste and creating a more sustainable industry but offering customers a memorable hospitality experience.
Organisation: Bennett Hay
Announcement: The hospitality services business is bringing nutrition to the forefront of its catering offering by launching a partnership with nutritionist Dorota Cloke, a qualified nutritionist and member of the Royal Society for Public Health. She is a weight management specialist and a wellness coach and has worked with some of London and New York’s top restaurants.
Description: Cloke will raise awareness about the medicinal properties of healthy eating, share insight on adaptogens and nootropics and provide workplace sessions on planning balanced weekly meals, home hacks on nutrition as well as on benefits of intermittent fasting. Workshops will also be developed across Bennett Hay’s estates to offer nutritional guidance for employees with specific needs, including women in menopause and people with health concerns.
Details: The correlation between employee wellbeing and corporate performance plus heightened consumer awareness around diet and health has led the caterer to work closer with clients’ wellbeing programmes. Cloke will oversee the development of menus that help manage energy and encourage break times. She will also seek to educate on healthy eating, the benefits of a balanced diet and the way in which different nutrients affect an employee's personal health and wellbeing.
Bennett Hay is partnering with nutritionist Dorota Cloke – Image from Bennett Hay
