Background

Acacia have been providing Technical Facilities Management services to Shannon Heritage (on behalf of and by agreement with Fingal County Council) for the Malahide Castle tourism venue in North Dublin including the Castle, Visitors Centre, Display Museum, and retail units since 2013.

Start-up approach

The castle itself is obviously a visitor attraction of significant historical importance while the visitor centre was built and opened in 2012 and includes a number of retail units. Acacia were appointed to manage all of the site maintenance services towards the end of the initial twelve month dilapidation period so it was necessary for us to rapidly mobilise all services in order to identify any outstanding issues that could be resolved while the building was still within the warranty period. This resulted in significant savings being made by our client due to faulty installations.

As the scope of the contract includes all of the technical services across the site, we initially anaylsed the  systems and equipment that would require maintenance and then considered how to achieve the best solution regarding the use of existing or new specialist subcontractors. Where some of the system suppliers or existing providers were offering good value services, we established service contracts with them whereas where we believed that better solutions were possible, we looked to each market to find suitable suppliers to provide these services. This has resulted in a package of services that best fits the requirements of our client while ensuring that value for money is achieved.

An additional stakeholder on the Malahide Castle site is the Fingal County Council Operations (formerly Parks) Department because they maintain the grounds and gardens across the site. There is inevitably a crossover of duties with the Operations Department regarding services such as external lighting, foul and storm drainage, utilities and security systems. Our experience of working with other indirect stakeholders such as local authority departments resulted in us successfully establishing an effective and healthy relationship with the Operations Department regarding this site, to the benefit of our client.

Resourcing

To ensure that the best solutions were put in place initially and then to ensure that a consistently high standard of service was maintained, we assigned one of our (Degree Qualified) engineers to the site to manage all of the activities, backed up by our Associate Director for Technical Services.

Key Achievements since taking over this contract:

• The establishment of a full suite of preventative maintenance solutions which both ensure that the likely life expectancy of all of the plant and equipment is maximized, and ensures that our client is achieving complete legal compliance with all applicable regulations.
• The identification of a number of “snag issues” which were subsequently resolved by the original installers while still under warranty.
• The identification and resolution of a number of issues with installed systems which had the potential to cost our client significant amounts in the long term.
• The representing of our client with other stakeholders such as retail tenants and Operations Department regarding operational site management solutions