Amanda's Pipeline to Customer Satisfaction
Step forward Amanda White. The 29 year old from York, is one of four Customer Liaison Officers working across Yorkshire and the Humber to ensure that wherever essential gas works are taking place, residents and traders are kept up to date with the progress of the work. Here, Amanda takes time out from a packed day to share the details of a day in her life:
9.00 am
First up, a planning meeting, this is where the surveyors and engineers come together to talk through upcoming projects. These meetings are really important as I am often able pick up on potential issues and resolve them before they become a problem. For example, I’ll flag up potential clashes with community events or highlight traffic issues – there is often a simple way round things and we always do our best to minimise disruption. As a team we are never short of projects that need attention - United Utilities manages around 37,000km of gas mains on behalf of Northern Gas Networks and covers an area from the Humber to the Scottish borders and across to Cumbria with a population of 6.7 million people, so we are kept pretty busy!
10.00 am
Time to get out and visit a street where we are due to start work. I walk the route of the job and identify potential problems. I also make on the opportunity to speak with people and let them know about the work. Sometimes there are problems with access to properties or maybe our work clashes with an important social event. I recently arranged for work to be rescheduled to avoid clashing with the judging for a village’s Yorkshire in Bloom entry! They were really impressed that we were able to do this but it is all a part of the service!
11.00 am
Every year United Utilities replaces around 580km of old metal gas pipe with modern plastic pipes that are safer and more reliable. We are currently carrying out a replacement job in York city centre. For a project like this I usually need to spend a lot of time on site. I begin by knocking on traders and residents’ doors to make sure they have received our letters giving advance warning of the work. Once we have started work, I ensure that if the gas supply has been disconnected they are not suffering in any way because of it.
12.00-2.00 pm
In York, as with most major projects, we have an information cabin on site so that people can come and see us for a chat about our work – I am on hand daily to answer questions and I am available to address concerns as and when they arise.
2.00 pm
I head off to deliver a ‘Play Safe Stay Safe’ presentation at a junior school just outside York. The programme is delivered in schools that are close to our projects, offering an opportunity to educate young people about being safe around roadworks. A simple fall could result in broken bones or worse - we see education as key to preventing this. The sessions always go down well with the children and we often find that demand outstrips our ability to supply but we usually find a way!
16.30 pm
Just time to pop back to the office and check emails and look at maps for tomorrow’s site visits. Looking ahead, I start selecting schools for this year’s Crucial Crew Roadshow. We plan to visit a number of schools across Yorkshire and educate young people about what to do if they smell gas. We turn up with a ‘room set’ complete with gas appliances and run through a number of scenarios with the children and in case they don’t know what gas smells like, we leave them with a scratch and sniff card so they are in no doubt! Planning for tomorrow done, its time to head home and get a bit of well deserved rest before starting again with a fresh face and a smile in the morning.
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