Partner Article

Business has proved to be buoyant

By Mark Rapley, General Manager, Wilkinson Maintenance

There’s an old saying that it never rains but it pours, which is particularly relevant this year given the almost biblical deluges we’ve experienced. Many of our members of staff, like most of other businesses, were disrupted on their daily commutes.However, the flooding has had a knock-on effect for many maintenance companies like ours that have helped many companies to get back on their feet in the aftermath of the torrential rain.

A range of businesses including pubs, retail outlets and schools were badly affected by the poor weather that hit our region, and needed urgent maintenance work to ensure that they were able to resume normal service in the shortest possible time. We’re obviously delighted that the business is doing so well, albeit in the face of adversity. Our workload has increased by twenty per cent over the second quarter of this year when the wet and windy weather was at its worst.

Call outs and extensive maintenance work have included jobs on behalf of pubs and other premises that have been badly affected by flooding. Complete refits entailing new bars, toilets, re-wiring and new carpets, are common, with some of our work made up of repeat visits to the same premises. We decided about two years ago that we wanted to restructure and diversify, and instead of waiting for the work to come to us, we needed to go out and find it.

We’re pleased at the remarkable progress we’ve made in such a short space of time, but we’re not resting on our laurels. It’s partly due to the fact we diversified, and partly because we fit our service around what the businesses need.

The company’s North East based clients include Norchem Group for whom it handles maintenance work for its 30 pharmacies in the region, while it has also recently won a contract with North East Lettings whose offices are in Team Valley. North East Lettings manages a portfolio of over 500 properties nationally. Other blue chip clients include Enterprise Inns, Punch Taverns, JD Wetherspoons, Integrated Dental Holdings and Volvo UK.

For more than a decade there has been at least one serious flood a year in the UK, and experts predict the impacts of climate change and rising sea levels could increase the intensity and frequency of inland, coastal, and flash floods over the coming years. The changes have led us to adapt to cope with these peaks in workload.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Wilkinson Maintenance .