Our Client:

Established in 1880, Provident Financial is one of the UK’s leading suppliers of personal credit products to the nonstandard lending market. A FTSE 250 company, they serve 2.5 million customers across the UK.

The Project:

Due to an extensive re-organisation of their business, our client was planning to close over 100 locations through the UK and Northern Ireland. There would be no representatives from the company on site at any of the locations and the clearance of all the locations would need to be completed within just four weeks.

We designed a methodology for the move which would enable Provident Financial to use one supplier for all of their requirements. We used our in-house group divisions to handle all the various aspects of the move, with the disposal of confidential waste being undertaken by Restore Datashred and Restore Technology overseeing the data wiping and recycling of the IT and communications equipment.

We developed a programme and schedule for all 100+ locations using seven of our network branches, clearing offices across almost the entire length of the country, from Invergordon in the Scottish highlands all the way down to Plymouth on the south-west coast.

Our Solution

Keys to each of their affected offices were sent to the relevant Restore Harrow Green branch to gain access. A strict protocol for the teams to follow was developed in order to ensure every item was cleared from site so that the client would have no unforeseen or avoidable property dilapidation issues with their landlords. This included the supervisor at each location taking photos of the site after the clearance and sending them through to Provident Financial. In order to co-ordinate the programme we arranged for a project manager to be on site at Provident headquarters for the full four week programme, based with the client’s property team. This enabled any issues to be reported in real time and resolved before teams left each site.

All waste transfer notes confirming what had been removed and recycled were provided to PFG after each clearance in order to satisfy their duty of care. Detailed reports confirming IT equipment data wiping and recycling by asset number were also provided.

The scale of the job undertaken by Restore Technology alone was vast, with a total of 2138 electrical items being recycled, including 665 hard drives, all adding up to a total weight of nearly 18 tonnes. All hard drives were wiped or destroyed to CESG standards and equipment was recycled in accordance with UK and EU regulations.

As with any project of this size, variations in its scope arose during its course and we provided solutions to them. One such case was developing a solution to pack and collect specific IT assets and smartphones in order for them to be retained within the business rather than disposed of. We carried this out in all 80+ of the required locations and delivered them to Bradford for re-programming before returning them to the client.

The Outcome

At the end of the four weeks we had completed the property consolidation to the client brief, comfortably meeting the given deadline and budget. Despite the vast scale of the project we were able to utilise our various regional centres to ensure we were able to clear every office across the length of the country within the give timescale.

Employing the skills of our in-house divisions meant each aspect of the project was handled by experts. Provident Financial were able to rely on us to clear every office whilst ensuring data and confidential waste would be dealt with safely and in line with all regulations, and thanks to our project manager the company was kept informed during the entire process.

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