Helping our client to meet their targets

We supported our clients meet their Internal Sewer Flood targets and build a strong platform for long-term sustainable improvements in all flooding events. 

Insights that Reson8

• Penalty Avoidance – Reduced the number of ISF by 22%, resulting in avoiding penalty payment of £13m within 12 months 
• Customer Improvement – Reduced the number of customers experiencing repeated ISF incidents by 31.8%
• Improved Efficiency – Increased the efficiency of the team by reducing the volume of follow on work by 46%

Challenge

Our client was struggling to meet its business plan targets for Internal Sewer Floods (ISF) despite significant investment in new working methods. They had recently insourced work from a partner to increase their control of performance levers but were experiencing several issues.

The number of managers and employees transferring from the partner organisation was significantly lower than was planned. As a result, they needed to recruit a large number of staff to meet the workload. This resulted in a large proportion of the workforce being inexperienced and less productive than planned.

Analysis of the ISF data showed that a c22% of all ISFs were related to repeat incidents; with approx. 50% related to jobs requiring civil partners to complete a ‘dig and fix’.

Solution

• We worked with the HR team to streamline the recruitment and training programme to reduce the lead time for new recruits to be available to operations to schedule.
• We simplified the shift structures to create additional ‘tool’ time for teams by reducing downtime between shifts, creating an additional £300k of capacity.
• Established a technical support centre to monitor requests for ‘follow on work’ and to advise field teams on how to address issues ‘right first time’. Reduced the volume of ‘follow-on’ work by 46%.
• We worked with civil contractors to reduce the lead time to resolve civils issues related to ISFs. Reduced the lead time by 87% from job raised to resolution.
• We implemented a performance management system and supporting KPI to focus the management team on the key performance levers to enable long-term sustainability.

Results

As a result of our intervention, our client was able to meet their business plan targets and record the lowest number of ISF ever. They have been able to sustain the improvement and continue to see year-on-year reductions.

The success of the long-term sustainability of the change has been attributed by the client to the supporting management systems, which have maintained leadership focus on the key performance drivers and has now become an internal benchmark.

If you would like to know more about our experiences, please email dean.wheeler@reson8.group.