S and J Building Services Company News...



DDA tender accepted by Southampton City Council
S and J Building Services have been appointed sole contractor to carry out all the works to bring all the Southampton City Council public buildings up to DDA compliance.
This 3 year contract includes all the leisure centres, public libraries, civic buildings, youth & community centres etc.
S and J Building Services are proud to be the sole contractor and are already well under-way with the improvements. You may already have seen the new ramps being built during your travels?




The S and J fleet gets bigger...
S and J have now taken delivery of our latest new sign written Van bringing the fleet up to 8 vans as well as the usual car pool. Look out for our brightly painted vans with the S and J logo, and if you have a chat with our drivers you will find us friendly and approachable. Tell us what you have in mind and we will give you the benefit of our experience and advise as well as arranging the quotes, etc. etc.




Building on IT.
We don't normally associate the building services industry with IT or Information Technology. We know it's there, with quality control testing and fantastic new hi-tech building materials with insulation properties we used to dream of. The popular image of the builder is the guy with pencil behind the ear, and a plan drawn up on the back of a fag packet.

At S and J we soon found the only way to go these days is to grasp the nettle and get involved. We don't claim to understand the nitty-gritty, but it's clear our investment in new computer systems is the only way to handle the payroll and produce accurate quotes quickly. There are a number of other benefits too. Sourcing materials, keeping up to date with new products and current prices from our trade suppliers all takes the guesswork out of estimating. That helps us and the clients.

Email is unavoidable too. More and more of our customers want to keep in touch on a daily basis to monitor progress, exchange ideas and modify their requirements right up to the point where work begins, and then keep on top of things during the work. It will never replace the phone and personal contact but it does make things immediate, and has cut out some of the delays in sending letters.

In the S and J office, every day the computers go on first, and off last. I would not say we are totally reliant on them because we could get by without them for a while, but like any business, we need the right tools to do our job.

With this in mind we have now got Dean on board to help us exploit this new technology, and develop it into the future. Better communication, more immediate pricing, more accurate quotes and tendering and with easier sourcing of specialist materials is benefiting us as a business, and our clients who rely on us for fast accurate work.