Amey

OUTCO works as the principal winter service provider for Amey under their national partnership with the Ministry of Justice (MOJ). We deliver a highly performing winter gritting and snow clearance service to MOJ prisons each winter season – across Wales, northern England and the West Midlands. OUTCO has worked with Amey under contract since November 2015 and are now entering our sixth season. We continue to deliver exceptional performance, including extraordinary cold weather events such as the Beast from the East in 2018. In 2020 we attended 100% of sites within time, with zero inspection failures. A suite of performance reports is emailed daily to Amey staff against set KPIs. In the morning we provide pre-inspection work schedules per site for the day/night, with post-activation reports confirming attendance for the shift completed. Monthly summaries detail our performance including daily activation temperatures.

Delivery

Operators go the extra mile and notify Amey when we encounter anything unusual onsite – a Service Issue Notification. This can include damaged lighting or blocked external pipes or drainage. All notifications are emailed to the client by our 24/7 Helpdesk, following receipt of the operators’ report recorded on their smartphone.

Operations

We directly employ a team of 38 highly trained winter operators to service all sites, with additional operators called on should sustained severe weather conditions occur. All operators are locally based across the regions to deliver a highly responsive service. We employ 12 two-man teams and 14 sole operators. The operational team is managed by our regional directors and their assistant regional managers, based out of our yards in Caerphilly, Lutterworth, Leeds and York, plus 203 salt sites spread across the UK. Our dedicated account manager and 24/7 helpdesk assists Amey staff, should they wish to ask questions or request a call-out visit. We service 55 prisons covering 1,233,142m2. A seven day service is operated between November and March, with activated visits undertaken between a 1600 hours – 0600 hours window for external sites only. For sites within the jail, we operate between 1600 hours – 2100 hours. Call-out requests are also undertaken as and when requested.