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Neil Alder-Hindon


‘MAINTENANCE REBORN’ MANTRA INCENTIVISES


THE VINEYARD GROUP With a portfolio of three, four and five-star hotels and two prestigious golf courses in West Berkshire, as well as an hotel in Bedfordshire, The Vineyard Group has an established reputation for the providing the best in terms of hospitality, accommodation and beautiful surroundings. However, we all know that it doesn’t matter how luxurious the towels, how tasty the food or how beautiful the interior, if we are physically uncomfortable then the experience will be marred.


Neil Alder-Hindon has been Group Property Manager at The Vineyard Group for nearly three years and during that time he has overseen a complete change of mindset when it comes to facilities management at the hotels, spas and club houses. He said: “When everything is running smoothly in the plant rooms neither guests or management give the supply of fresh air or hot water a second thought. But, if the seemingly boundless supply is interrupted or conference facilities become too cold or too stuffy then things need resolving immediately.”


The Donnington Valley Hotel and Spa, is located just outside Newbury and encompasses a 113-room hotel, a spa and an 18-hole golf course. The hotel element was purpose built in the 1990s, and the spa was opened 13 years ago. It became apparent when Alder-Hindon joined the Group that key components such as water softeners, boilers & chlorifiers, and general pipework were all beginning to show their age and signs of neglect


20 | TOMORROW’S FM


were evident across both elements of the site.


West Berkshire is notorious for its extremely hard water and this is one factor that Alder-Hindon recognises as a contributing factor to some of the biggest challenges in maintaining the hotel’s services. “Not only did I inherit equipment that was starting to show signs of decreased efficiency, the similar could also be said for the approach to maintenance,” commented Alder-Hindon.


Southern Maintenance Solutions, (SMS), were already working at the hotel, but as Terry Tarbox, Contracts Manager, explained: “There was no obvious plan or logic to the repair and maintenance work we were being asked to do. It made no sense to us


to service a boiler without checking that all the associated valves and controllers were functioning.”


This has now changed and all of the Group’s premises are subject to a comprehensive, planned maintenance programme. Not only does make it much easier to schedule work around the working requirements of the hotel, but it has also gone a long way to alleviating the number of emergency calls out to respond to failures and leaks.


In addition to the hotel, there are also five staff houses on the Donnington Valley site. With no mains gas, each of these was heated with an oil based boiler, located inside the property. It became clear that both the boilers and the two oil tanks that serviced


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