Case Study

Executive summary

The A2Dominion Group is a leading housing provider and property developer in London and the South East, with 34,000 homes in management and thousands more in the development pipeline. A2Dominion has been named as one of the Top 100 not-for-profit organisations to work for by the Sunday Times in 2013, 2014 and 2015. The Group was also accredited with Best Companies ‘One to Watch’ status for 2015.

Universal has undertaken and continues to undertake a variety of moves for the A2Dominion Group, whether they be office moves, or installation, clearance and storage of show home furniture.

Challenges

An example of a recent relocation project for the A2Dominion Group was a 3 phase project moving around 600 staff from 5 buildings in West London to new and refurbished offices in Staines, the A2Dominion Group’s regional headquarters in Ealing, and the A2Dominion Group’s head office at The Point in Paddington. The move also provided an opportunity for the A2Dominion Group to adopt new working practices such as hot desking.

How Universal delivered

Each phase brought with it its own twists and challenges to overcome. Phase 1, for example, which saw 150 staff relocated from Chertsey and Staines into newly refurbished offices in Staines had the added inconvenience of unoperational lifts in the new premises, necessitating all crates therefore to be carried up stairs by the Universal operatives.

Throughout the move, large quantities of filing had to be packed and decanted, a service provided by the Universal team.

Results, Return on Investment and Future Plans

Universal were able to call on their senior management team’s vast experience of change and project management together with relocation expertise to assist the client’s project team and staff in adopting new working methods and practices.

Universal were also able to provide a full filing audit and mapping service for the client, an exercise often left to external consultants at substantial costs. By providing a file audit and mapping service, Universal was able to keep external costs to a minimum for the client, whilst analysing and independently advising A2Dominion Group on storage and filing utilisation levels within the workplace. Such a service identified the different mediums and volumes of storage attributable to different departments or individuals, thereby assessing levels of optimisation and efficiencies that could be gained.

Client feedback

Peter Morrison (Head of Facilities)

“When working with UCR, I was impressed with the range of additional services such as project management, telephony, space audits, recycling and off-site storage they were able to offer. These certainly added value to their offer. I can see that trend continuing in the industry. I can remember doing a move 15 years ago and those services were not offered by the removal company then, it was more a men, van and crates operation.”