When this County Council decided to look at alternative delivery models for Cleaning and Catering Services (CCS) to schools, many of the existing staff became defensive, fearing for their jobs. The Council’s motivation was to ensure quality, value for money and sustainability, and it tasked Lewis with delivering an options paper on how the future service could be structured.
With the existing team fearing for its future, it was never going to willingly cooperate with the Business Analyst hired by the Council to investigate that future. Lewis had the option to base himself in the Council’s offices; instead he chose to sit with the CCS team in the portacabin headquarters. This got him closer to the people delivering the service and the existing operational processes. He interviewed them all at length and then spent time questioning 10% of the schools about the service they received. Not satisfied with just teacher feedback, he canvassed the views of the pupils too, devising a sticker based system so that their feedback could be properly captured.
With the huge quantity of data captured, he developed a high-level options paper for Council Members and the senior management team within children’s services which on cleaning alone had the potential to yield £1.5m savings per annum.
The Head of Business Strategy said, “Lewis’s performance has been outstanding, developing very positive relationships with CCS staff and other stakeholders. He is genuinely one of the most thorough interims I have ever worked with and I would welcome him back.”
