COMPANY FOCUS: GRANT
GRANT ENGINEERS NEW PREMISES IN SWINDON
Fiona Russell Horne gets a tour of Grant Engineering’s new headquarters and training academy.
H
eating manufacturer Grant UK has moved to new premises with the company’s head office, warehousing and Training Academy now based in Swindon, Wiltshire. The new site includes offices and storage facilities that, at over 80,000sqft, are three times larger than the previous premises, allowing Grant UK to continue its expansion in the sustainable heating arena. In addition to providing greater office space and significantly increased on-site storage capacity, the new site has also enabled Grant UK’s Training Academy to be expanded as well. Marketing director Anna Wakefield explains that the company was already looking to move from its outgrown premises in Devizes when the Covid pandemic hit. “We realised that once we were bringing people back to the office that we had also outgrown the office space as well,” she says. Not only has the building been designed to allow the company to be as self-sufficient as possible, but the interiors have been designed to be as user-friendly, and sustainable as possible too.
The new offices are fitted out with sustainable flooring, all the fabrics in the reception area are recycled and recyclable. There is a nice open airy coffee shop feel that Wakefield says was a deliberate tactic. “Not only did we realise that people returning from working from home during the pandemic would need to be easd back into the whole office environment, but, because we were also asking a very local workforce to relocate, we needed it to be somewhere they would be happy to commute to,” she says.
The 125 employees were involved in all the design decisions and were given the opportunity to say what they would like to see featured in the new premies. As a result, there is gym, a pool table and air-hockey in the break- out area and number of coffee-shop style kitchen areas. “We wanted to keep everyone engaged. In our old premises, the various areas such as warehousing and design were quite separate, now there is much more integration. We even have a company pool league. It was also important for us to offer things that are comparable with other companies
in the Swindon area, where there is a lot of competition for employees.”
The offices all have sit/stand desks that are individually operated so they can be set at the optimum height for whoever is using them, and all the office chairs are made by a local manufacturer using ocean bound plastics. All round the premises are meeting rooms that are bookable or useable if someone needs to have a quite space to work. There are also soundproof pods in many of the open plan office areas for when someone just needs to take a phone call and be focused on it rather than in the open office.
The 768 solar pv panels on the roof run all the air-conditioning, servers and charging ports for the forklifts. Wakefield says the solar batteries currently on order arrive will be used to store the solar power to charge up the forklifts and IT servers overnight. “We really will be totally self- sustaining in that way,” she says. Three biomass boilers have been installed which are providing the heating and hot water for the site, including the warehouse which,replacing three smaller
March 2023
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areas at Devizes, holds 6,000 pallets instead of 2,000.
There are three training areas: heat pumps, solar and oil boilers. Training courses can be in person but also online: either live online with a trainer or via a recording.
The new premises were opened by Tim Pollard, Principal of Pollard and Pollard at the end of 2022, and in January of this year, were visted by Sir Robert Buckland, the MP for Swindon South, and Justin Tomlinson, the MP for Swindon North. During the visit, both MPs were able to meet with staff, learn more about the sustainable features as well as discussing the development of low carbon heating, in particular the Renewable Liquid Heating Fuel Bill that was recently raised in Parliament.
Grant managing director Paul Wakefield says: “The road to a cleaner, low carbon future will be full of opportunities and this move to new facilities will ensure that we as a company can continue to deliver the high-quality products and services that our customers have come to expect from Grant.” BMJ
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