The electrical installation industry is highly competitive. With many sole traders and small companies operating in a single locality, it is sometimes challenging for organisations and home owners to be able to simply identify who will provide a quality service, with them often offering the business to larger companies who are seen as potentially more professional.
A. Hull Electrical was established in 1986 by Neil Poxon, and his then business partner, to provide trusted, honest, loyal, no-nonsense electrical services for domestic and commercial clients across the East Midlands.
The company now employs more than 20 people and has, over its 30-year trading history, gone from strength to strength, securing contracts with a range of public and private sector clients ranging from councils and housing providers, through to large commercial and industrial companies.
By staying true to their core values, innovating and ensuring that they continue to demonstrate their expertise by investing in training and developing their staff, has kept them head and shoulders above the competition, and helped them to diversify their offering to provide building services through the establishment of their sister company Leicester Home Improvements in 2014.
With commercial and public-sector contracts becoming increasingly more difficult to secure, Managing Director Neil Poxon recognised that he needed to take his company to the next level in order to maintain their commercial advantage.
Developing a reputation for quality
“We have always strived to achieve the highest possible standards for our customers,” says Neil. “There was a time when just delivering a high-quality service was enough for you to keep your contracts and gain repeat business, but as the market has become more competitive and regulations around contracting suppliers has become more stringent, we have needed to invest in differentiating what we offer and demonstrating that we really are the best.”
Over the years, A. Hull Electrical has gained a range of recognised accreditations. All A. Hull Electrical employees are qualified to the highest level and the company is an NICEIC Approved Contractor and Installer. The company is a Safe Contractor (which recognises the company’s commitment to health and safety), it is also EXOR accredited (which guarantees public sector commissioners that the company has the correct documentation for tender pre-qualification), they are members of Constructionline (which again guarantees they are suitably qualified to deliver public sector construction contracts) and are CHAS health and safety accredited.
“Although we hold a number of different accreditations, speaking with our clients we realised that they are now looking for more and the ISO accreditations conveys a universal message that provides guarantees to our clients that we are running a high-quality business.”
The process
A. Hull first contacted Independent Advice for Business (IA4B) for support with their health and safety and HR, after their previous adviser retired.
While looking at their business processes, as part of their health and safety audit, the IA4B team identified that it would not take much for the company to achieve not only ISO9001:2015 management systems accreditation, but also the ISO14001:2015 Environmental Management and BS OH SAS 18001:2007 Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems.
Neil explains: “Historically, I had been put off going for any ISO accreditation for a number of reasons – the cost, the size of our business and the potential that our systems and processes weren’t right. But working with Peter Jones from IA4B he helped me to realise that actually we were in just the right position to invest in achieving it – we already had excellent systems and processes and all we needed was their support to document them and develop our quality manual, and identify where we need to focus our attentions in order to improve.
“I was thrilled when we sailed through our ISO9001:2015 accreditation in just twelve weeks and were told we had passed. It has instilled a confidence that we are operating in the right way and hopefully gives our clients that confidence too.”
Helping the business to improve
Through the accreditation process A. Hull Electrical have not only gained a renewed confidence in how they operate, they have also identified that the accreditation will help them to continually improve their business.
“The accreditation will help us to improve what we do in a number of ways,” explains Neil. “It gives us a way of tracking back through our supply chain when something has gone wrong. For example, if an electrician starts on site and realises that they are short of a socket in their job bag, then we can look across every aspect of the process to identify where the issue possibly arose. From asking whether we counted enough sockets when undertaking the survey, or mistyped the order when writing up our stock sheet, or miscounted when picking and packing the order, through to the possibility a socket maybe just fell out in the van when transporting to site, we know we can’t eliminate human error, but we can reduce it by understanding where we maybe need to invest in improving our approach.”
“We have also identified a number of business areas that we want to develop. We have always been a company that is committed to sustainability and the environment – but this is now written into the fabric of our business,” adds Neil.
Next steps
Following the success of achieving ISO9001:2015 Quality Management Systems, A. Hull Electrical is now working towards gaining ISO14001:2015 Environmental Management and BS OH SAS 18001:20017 Occupational Health and Safety Management.
“We have an excellent track record in health and safety, but feel it is important to achieve the recognised standards, not only for our confidence and ongoing improvement, but to help us to continue to gain new contracts and retain our existing ones. We are part of Constructionline and EXOR and tenderers can specify through these whether they want to exclude companies without ISO standards when offering tender opportunities. There are not many electrical contractors our size that have these accreditations and we now know that we have a chance to compete against larger companies for contracts across the country.”
Find out more at www.ahullelectrical.co.uk
