We at VIVO Defence Services today (Thursday, 1 February) mark our second anniversary looking after the UK Military’s Built Estate during which time we have undertaken more than one million maintenance jobs, completed nearly 25,000 special projects and contributed to a number of social value initiatives.
We started working on behalf of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) providing maintenance, asset management and project work at military bases across the southwest and central regions in February 2022.
This covers a wide array of tasks, such as maintaining hangars and runways at air stations, looking after Single Living Accommodation (SLA) and providing grounds maintenance across Royal Navy, British Army, Royal Air Force, Strategic Command and Defence Equipment & Support bases.
Over the two year period, we undertook around 260,000 preventative planned maintenance tasks in 2022 and over 372,000 in 2023. These were largely brought about due to our aim towards moving the service to one where planned maintenance work is carried out to keep things running, rather than the ‘fix on fail’ approach of the previous contract.
In regards to reactive maintenance tasks, we carried out around 148,000 in 2022 and nearly 226,000 the following year. In total, this equates to around 1,006,000 overall planned and reactive maintenance tasks across the more than 100 military bases we are charged with looking after stretching from the Scottish borders to Cornwall.
We also operate a 24/7 helpdesk across its Built Estate regions so military personnel can report maintenance issues directly and this received over 204,000 emails and phone calls in 2022 and nearly 246,000 in 2023. In fact, the helpdesk recently had its busiest day ever on 8 January 2024, following Storm Henk, when it received 1,099 calls and 679 emails in one day.
We at VIVO have also invested heavily in extra resources - increasing the number of people available on the contracts by 40 per cent - and carried out nearly 25,,000 Billable Works projects – work outside of the contract scope that includes everything from repairing a gate to building a new facility.
At RAF Waddington, in Lincolnshire, along with our supply chain partners wecompleted a £3.6 million dye-bay for the Red Arrows in July 2023 - the first bespoke maintenance facility the world famous aerial flying team have had for their dye pods , which make their iconic smoke trails. The Red Arrows were so pleased with this they performed a fly-past to mark its opening.
We also recently completed – with partners - a Primary Care Rehabilitation Facility at RAF Waddington for service personnel with musculoskeletal injuries and upgraded a data centre at ISS Boddington, in Gloucestershire. Other tasks have included rebuilding the historic grade II listed Serpentine Wall at RM Norton Manor, in Somerset, and refurbishing the entrance gates at Britannia Royal Naval College, at Dartmouth, Devon, which have been battered by the elements for 117 years.
At the same time, we carried out much social value work including providing work placements for armed forces personnel to practice their trade skills in a private sector environment. This is aimed at helping them gain work when they leave active service. Other social value projects include working with partners to provide a safe space ‘listening ear’ for school children from military families and their friends to talk about concerns at a school in Dorset.
The next 12 months will see a whole new range of billable work projects, for example, a new nine-mile security fence at RNAS Culdrose. in Cornwall, a glider storage building at RAF Shawbury, in Shropshire, and an accommodation block at MOD Kineton, in Staffordshire.
Jerry Moloney, our Managing Director at VIVO Defence, said: “It has been a really busy, but productive time on our Built Estate regions over the past two years with more than a million maintenance jobs carried out and tens of thousands of special projects completed.
“I am particularly proud that, in addition to the major contribution we have made to the military bases where we work, our people have contributed to some extremely worthwhile social value initiatives. This is a total credit to them, and I thank all our hardworking teams and our partners for everything they have done.”