Case Study: Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Services

IRS approached Aubrey Allen in late 2023 to see if they were interested in discussing their service requirements for their Refrigeration & Air Conditioning equipment. Being a critical service for their business, Aubrey Allen had been with the same provider for 10 years but with their contract up for renewal in March 2024, were happy to consider an alternative perspective and proposal for the servicing to compare against the incumbent.

Initial Meeting and Understanding Client Needs

IRS’ Business Development Manager James Hewitt set up a meeting along with Operations Director Ian Sallows to meet, review and discuss the requirements at Aubrey Allen’s Coventry base with their long serving Technical Manager Kevin Ball.

It was immediately clear to James and Ian that response, quality of service and customer care were the primary key requirements to Kevin and his team in order to maintain their operations efficiently and without disruption.

Developing a Tailored Service Proposal

James and Ian were able to work with Kevin to discuss and refine a detailed contract scope to meet those objectives, over the following several weeks, in order to ensure a tailored solution was found, with options on a 1-year and 3-year agreement put forward. This process included the introduction to Kevin and his Team of IRS’ Director of Service Scott Davis and Engineering Supervisor Trevor Vanstone, who would be the key contacts to Kevin for the day-to-day delivery of the contract.

After final consultation with Kevin and Operations Director, Niels Donders, Aubrey Allen took the leap of faith to agree to a 3-year deal with IRS, with the contract signed on 11th March 2024.

Initial Contract Mobilisation Included:

• Site introduction and familiarisation carried out by Trevor with the rest of the IRS engineering team, ensuring knowledge of where the equipment was located, what it served, how it was controlled and an introduction to Kevin and his team to ensure relationships and understanding of the site were established early.
  ‍
• Registration for Kevin and his team to the IRS Client Portal to enable immediate and live access to all asset schedules, F-Gas data/management, engineers job reports, individual asset PPM reports and job history, quotations, full site asset lifecycle status report, evidence of IRS’ company accreditations and all engineers training and competence certifications.
  ‍
• Sharing of all IRS personnel contact details, out-of-hours details and clear lines of communication, ensuring day-to-day contacts and escalation were clearly understood.
  ‍
• Agreeing of PPM schedules for the first year.
  ‍
• Sharing of log-in details for IRS to the site RDM system to enable remote monitoring and review in the case of breakdowns, ensuring prompt action, understanding and response.
  ‍
• Organisation of regular site review meetings to review contract performance, identify any issues that require attention and establish actions and timescales to resolve.

Year Two: Client Feedback and Ongoing Partnership

As we have moved in to the second year of the 3-year agreement, Aubrey Allen were kind enough to provide their feedback on the experience of working with IRS so far.

Client Testimonial

"As a 3rd generation family owned business with Sustainability, Provenance and Consistency at the core of everything we do, quality service and consistency from our suppliers is just as important for us to receive as it is for us to provide to our own customers. Reliable refrigeration and air conditioning plant is absolutely critical to our business operations. When we brought in IRS, it was immediately clear we were dealing with professionals who understood the specific demands of the meat industry. Their team now maintains all our refrigeration, air conditioning and ventilation equipment and we couldn’t be more satisfied with their performance to date."

"They’re prompt, knowledgeable, and always go the extra mile to make sure we stay compliant with food and industry safety standards. Any time we've had an emergency – day or night – their response has been fast and effective. Access to all documentation and analytical reports via the IRS Client Portal has made the administration process so simple. Since partnering with them, we've had minimal downtime, and that peace of mind is priceless in our line of work.”

“It was a big step for us to take changing supplier after so many years, but we trusted in what James, Ian and the team had proposed and are happy to say that they have delivered on their promises and surpassed our expectations. We would have no hesitation in highly recommending them for any business like ours, where quality service and temperature control is non-negotiable."

— Kevin Ball, Technical Manager, Aubrey Allen.