In production and manufacturing, shutting things down to accommodate work such as a refurbishment or electrical upgrade can be costly. In addition to the financial impact of prolonged – and avoidable – downtime, being unable to meet demand for their products has the potential to damage relationships with stockists and consumers.

Utilising our experienced in house teams and working with our key supply chain partners, we’re uniquely placed to draw on a huge pool of talent from across the company, and to work with other companies within the Morris & Spottiswood Group to provide specialist services such as architectural and building services design. It means that we’re able to act as a one-stop shop from concept, through design and on to completion. This enables us to ensure that the exacting standards we set for ourselves are evident in every part of the process. Our UK wide network of offices and teams means that we’re able to deliver nationwide – and that whatever the size or type of project, we have the resources and skills to make it happen. We understand what matters to our clients and that end dates are agreed on for a reason, and we go the extra mile to work around the needs of every live site we work on.

Our offering in this area started to develop in 2016 with a business-critical project for one of the UK’s leading soft drink companies. As producers of some of the nation’s best-loved brands they needed a company they could count on to not only work with them to develop innovative solutions, but to be able to deliver projects with minimal disruption to production. The fact that they remain a key client demonstrates our ability not just to meet, but exceed these expectations. Over the last few years, we’ve partnered with them on a range of projects from office and warehouse refurbishments, to major M&E upgrades and enabling works for new equipment such as production lines. As you would expect with such a busy client – and such a diverse range of projects – there have been exciting challenges and opportunities for us to develop our offering and approach. Our client knows that they can come to us with an idea or issue and that we will explore ideas and feasibility to reduce risk, translating their request into workable designs and then delivering on those designs.

Our clients also rely on us to have the expertise and experience needed to work in a live environment. As Spencer Lee, Director of Production & Manufacturing explains, avoiding downtime and disruptions are a key consideration for many of the projects that the team are involved in; “as we’re often working on live sites, it’s vital that we don’t cause any disruptions as production needs to carry on as normal. Stopping production isn’t always a case of turning things off while we work and then switching it back on – as well as the lost production time whilst we’re onsite, shutting down and then restarting systems to get production back online can, depending on the production process, take hours. We don’t want our clients to have to stop to accommodate us, so we tailor our approach to work around their needs, whether that’s working outside production hours or around the process. To make this happen safely for everyone – and to make sure what we’re doing works for the client – we make sure that we develop and maintain great working relationships with all of our clients.”

Nurturing such relationships with key clients is a key part of newly appointed Framework Manager, Doug Cook’s remit within the team. As Doug explains, his role is about exploring how the team can make their offering even better and what’s needed to do that. “My job is very much client focused, I’ll be out and about talking to clients, overseeing delivery from the team, and making sure that we have a great – and effective – relationship. I’ll be exploring the feasibility of projects, looking at how best we can deliver things and working with the team to explore new ideas, better products, and more efficient ways of working to ensure that we offer each and every client the best possible service and delivery for their operations,” says Doug.

The team has been further strengthened by the recent promotion of Rick Turner to the role of Construction Manager.

To date, the Production and Manufacturing team have delivered over £30 million worth of projects, and are passionate about delivering new projects to new clients. To do this – and to prepare for future growth – our team is constantly expanding, recruiting new talent and planning for the future.

Expertise, adaptability, and an inherent understanding of the demands of the manufacturing environment are what makes our team special. And why so many big brands trust us to deliver time after time.