Lifestyle Improvement

Link4Life is a Trust that was set up in 2007 to deliver affordable and accessible cultural and leisure services on behalf of Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council under a 15-year partnership agreement to the 206,000 residents of the Greater Manchester (UK) borough. The purpose of the trust is to give residents and visitors the opportunity to have improved access to arts and heritage, entertainment, fitness health, sports and leisure, to support them in leading healthy, creative and active lifestyles of their choice with a strong link and support to the community via the neighbourhood and development team.

To fulfill the lifestyle improvement brief, Link4Life provides a variety of creative and active facilities including an arts and heritage research centre, a cultural centre, a civic centre, several sports and leisure centres, a swimming complex, an athletics arena and a sports and entertainment arena. Link4Life also manages two outdoor venues: a golf course at Rochdale and a lake water activity centre at Hollingworth Lake. Three of the 12 sites managed by the organisation, Middleton Arena, Heywood Sports Village and Rochdale Leisure Centre, were newly constructed as part of a £34 million investment in facilities improvements.

Client:Link4Life

Project:Implementing QFM maintenance software to manage a wide range of cultural and leisure services.

Objectives:To track maintenance jobs, manage assets and control health and safety.

Results:Duplicate tasks have been eliminated, health and safety management is improved and a comprehensive audit trail is readily available. QFM has delivered significant time and cost savings.

Link4Life

Service Works Group info@swg.com

+44 (0)20 8877 4080

CASE STUDY

Across the 12 centres there is a vast and varied footfall,

as well as an array of different functions including

concerts, sporting events, theatre events,

private hires and weddings. This means

that resourcing requirements can differ

dramatically from one day to the next.

With the high wear and tear nature of the

activities taking place, the tracking of key

reactive and proactive maintenance tasks

is a vital job.

h The RequirementInitially Link4Life used an Excel spreadsheet to track

maintenance jobs and manage assets; however this proved to

be difficult to control the volume and complexity of jobs. The

spreadsheet was handled by one individual, which meant any

tasks had to be forwarded by email, via a phone call, or face-

to-face discussion before they could be logged or updated. The

result was a single point of failure, with the potential for backlogs

and delays. A decision was made that a professional multi-site

FM software system was an urgent requirement.

Samantha Agnew, the public services manager for Link4Life,

joined the organisation in early 2012. She is responsible for

cleaning and maintenance services across the Link4Life sites

and was tasked with bringing onboard a new software application

to manage the assets and services of the company.

In addition to Samantha Agnew, the Link4Life

facilities team comprises a cleaning staff of 40,

a three-person maintenance team and an

apprentice. Having used QFM Software

from Service Works Group in previous

roles, Samantha Agnew has found it

to be a reliable product that worked

effectively and was easy to use. This

was an essential criteria for Link4Life,

because its use was to be extended

across multiple sites by a variety of staff

with varying skill sets, not just dedicated FM

staff.

“QFM is a good fit with the Link4Life business, because it

supports the scheduling of incoming and outgoing work, as well

as repeat jobs, making it ideal for maintenance management,”

says Agnew.

QFM has been rolled out across all sites enabling the 100 plus

Centre Managers, Duty Officers and Duty Managers to use

the system now as a self service tool on a daily basis for asset

management and running the maintenance help desk.

Users are assigned different access rights, which means

dependent on permissions, they are able to view their own

site, or all sites across the organisation. Throughout the day

staff are able to log faults such as defective lighting or incorrect

temperatures and as a result, these can then be promptly dealt

with by the maintenance team.

Prior to implementing QFM there was a lack of information

recorded which led to the duplication of work and on occasions

serious health and safety repercussions. In one instance, there

was a faulty distribution board which although was recorded on

Excel, the information was incomplete. So when an external amp

was changed, but not the internal amp, a fire broke out onsite.

With QFM, the risk of such incidents are significantly reduced

because users can log comprehensive details of faults and

update jobs, as a result, the software provides a comprehensive

audit trail for future reference.

Link4Life

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Service Works Group info@swg.com

+44 (0)20 8877 4080

CASE STUDY

h Preparing Link4LifeWith no prior FM software in place, the main challenge of the

project was the preparation of the organisation and its processes,

both of which needed to be established before QFM was installed.

With the lack of an asset register and supplier list, combined with

the desire for a quick implementation, Samantha Agnew worked

closely with Service Works, who took a hands-on approach to the

QFM implementation.

When defining new operational processes and configuring QFM,

it is essential that the requirements of all system users are

considered in order to deliver an optimal solution to the wider

user base. Service Works collaborated with all potential users of

QFM to deliver a solution to Link4Life that would meet all of their

operational needs.

Link4Life

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Business Improvement

The visual nature of QFM works extremely well for Link4Life and with the whole services team able to use the system, information is recorded faster and more accurately than previously and there is no longer a single point of failure.

On joining Link4Life, Agnew and her team were only able to manage the asset and service management for three sites, but due to the ease of use and time savings that QFM has delivered, she has been able to add the remaining nine sites, bringing the whole group together under one system.

“The support and backup from Service Works Group is excellent. Whenever we need them to help us they are there. We are looking at expanding the use of QFM across the wider organisation,” concludes Agnew.

h User Buy InA system is only as good as its users, and with no prior FM

software experience by the main user group, Service Works

provided consultancy and guidance to ensure Link4Life staff

were fully trained and confident in using QFM.

Service Works ran user workshops and break-out sessions,

demonstrating how the product works, its relevance to everyone’s

roles and the benefits it would deliver and this helped to ensure

staff buy-in.

“The ease of use has lead to a smooth and early adoption by

staff. Our employees think QFM is a fantastic tool, it’s very

comprehensive and proving to be extremely effective,” says

Agnew.