Contract caterer Elior is supporting The Armed Forces Corporate Covenant – Image from Elior
A news round-up of stories in the FM sector
Organisation: Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA)
Service: Greater Manchester is the first city-region to launch a toolkit to help employers to create an age-friendly workplace. The Age-Friendly Toolkit is designed to help and inform employers.
Description: GMCA is holding a virtual event on Thursday 19 May for employers to learn about the economic benefits an age-friendly workforce can bring. The webinar is free to attend and features a panel of speakers from The Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter and Centre for Ageing Better, who will offer expert advice to attendees.
Details: Analysis from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that older workers are likely to experience a boost to work performance. The toolkit is devised to help businesses reap the benefits of a thriving and age-friendly workforce. It includes information on flexible working, how to hire age-positively and hints on how to encourage career development at all ages, and is based on the five principles established by the Centre for Ageing Better in its guide to ‘Becoming an Age-Friendly Employer’.
Background: OECD analysis shows that older workers play a key role in boosting an organisation’s performance because of their lower job turnover, management experience and general work experience. Having workers aged over 50 also increases younger colleagues’ productivity. Skills courses, funded through a range of programmes including Greater Manchester’s devolved Adult Education Budget and European Social Fund Skills for Growth, have been developed to give adults access to the essential life and vocational skills they need to progress.
Organisation: Vertas Group
Partnership: Combat2Coffee
Announcement: Vertas Group has created a joint venture with Combat2Coffee for its social value coffee arm, which will be named Combat2Coffee Commercial.
Description: Vertas says the creation of the joint venture “celebrates the growth of Combat2Coffee’s roasting provision”.
Detail: Combat2Coffee will continue to operate independently as a Community Interest Company (CIC) and a proportion of the profits from Combat2Coffee Commercial will be invested back into the CIC through gift aid.
Background: Combat2Coffee was established as a Community Interest Company (CIC) in 2018 and was set up with the aim of providing army veterans who are struggling with mental health challenges a safe haven, ‘one coffee at a time’.
Organisation: Pressac
Announcement: UK sensor manufacturer Pressac has launched new sensor technology that will give organisations all the data they need to create smarter, healthier, more efficient workplaces.
Description: The technology, developed at Pressac’s high-tech UK design and manufacturing facility, enables the monitoring of a range of different parameters in just one device, making the process of creating smart buildings easier and more efficient.
Detail: The technology has been designed to enhance Pressac’s existing occupancy and indoor environment sensing portfolio and introduce new sensing capabilities – volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particulate matter (PM 1, 2.5, 4 and 10) levels, light and sound.
Background: Pressac technology is designed to give organisations complete control over how they use their sensor data. The technology is system agnostic, so data can be sent securely to multiple IoT platforms or smart systems, enabling a scalable and future-proof solution. www.pressac.com
Organisation: Elior
Partnership: UK Armed Forces
Announcement: Contract caterer Elior has renewed its support for The Armed Forces Corporate Covenant to demonstrate its commitment to the recruitment of service veterans and their families and to support the Armed Forces community.
Description: Re-signing the covenant gives Elior the chance to encourage existing reservists to discuss their involvement with other colleagues and promote the reservist role to other employees. Elior will support employees who choose to be members of the Reserve forces, by accommodating their training and deployment.
Details: Elior will be actively recruiting ex-military personnel where possible. The firm will also continue to recruit and support the employment of service personnel’s partners and transfer them from one contract to another when their service partner is deployed at another location. Elior will offer a discount to members services personnel in customer-facing catering operations, such as museum cafés, along with discounts on room hire and pre-ordered food for event bookings at sports and football clubs where Elior supplies catering and hospitality services.
Background: The covenant, now in its 10th anniversary year, is a commitment from the nation that those who serve or have served, and their families, are treated fairly and not disadvantaged in their lives because of their military service. The government is committed to supporting the Armed Forces community by working with a range of partners who have signed the covenant.
Organisation: MGH Offshore
Announcement: The engineering and staffing company working within the global energy sector is reporting record business after including the provision of full turnkey engineering services.
Description: The company says it can support the energy sector at all phases of a project’s life cycle from project management, technical auditing, HSE service, to procurement, commissioning and installation. Operating from two offices in the North East, it mainly delivers services throughout Europe, particularly in the UK, Holland, Belgium and Denmark. The firm provides offshore staff to carry out small one-day projects or allocates personnel for longer assignments on larger-scale developments in sectors including wind, marine and oil and gas.
Details: Established in 2017, the firm is led by Matthew Lynn, a professional in the offshore industry, who reports a rise in its turnover of over 150% in its latest financial year. He states: “It was a natural fit for us to introduce a full turnkey offering providing engineering services – as key players in the market seek to work with a company that can execute projects from start to finish. This enables them to reduce costs, increase productivity and drive efficiencies – and being able to facilitate this for our clients has been pivotal in our growth.”
Background: Operating mainly in the offshore wind sector, the firm has supplied services at some of the UK’s key wind farms, including Hornsea One, Neart Na Gaoithe, Triton Knoll and Kincardine, the world’s largest offshore floating wind farm.
Organisation: ESS (Compass Group UK & Ireland’s subsidiary)
Service: Chemical-free cleaning Delivering Safety and Sustainability Benefits
Partnership: Tersano and Toucan Eco
Details: ESS has completed the roll-out of chemical-free cleaning across its defence and government services estate, providing safety benefits for colleagues and clients and decreasing the environmental impact of the service. It partnered with suppliers Tersano and Toucan Eco to deliver the project. The selected systems create powerful cleaning agents from tap water; Tersano uses oxygen and Toucan Eco uses table salt. Both produce antibacterial multi-surface cleaners that kill more than 99.99% of bacteria and microorganisms, including viruses like Covid-19.
Client: Government Services, Defence and Offshore markets
Description: The solutions generated are non-toxic, non-hazardous and non-allergenic to humans and animals. They cut exposure to chemicals for cleaners and building users and reduce the need to store hazardous substances on site.
Details: ESS cleans over 21 million square metres a week for its clients. Introducing chemical-free cleaning has removed 1.5m litres of chemical cleaning products and 50 tonnes of packaging waste from the business annually, delivering environmental benefits. There is also a decreased carbon footprint from deliveries. As the cleaning solutions revert to water after use, no harmful substances are disposed of in the water system.
Background: Following trials in a variety of settings, the technology has been introduced at 90 ESS locations. Chemical-free cleaning now forms a standard part of ESS’s cleaning offer.
Organisation: Johnson Controls
Announcement: The specialist in smart and sustainable buildings has opened (12 May) an OpenBlue Innovation Centre in its global HQ at One Albert Quay, Cork, Ireland.
Description: The OpenBlue Innovation Centre will aim to create a ‘future-ready’ built environment for both local and global customers. The centre will create 18 new research and development roles.
Details: Research and development at the OpenBlue Innovation Centre will focus on the global priority to reduce carbon emissions in the building sector.
ESS has rolled out chemical-free cleaning for its defence and government clients – Image from Compass Group
