Stepping up to the plate to support px Group
Do a good job and people will want to work with you. That’s been a mantra at Atom ever since our business was first founded. It turns out that the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Here’s a little insight into the work we’ve been doing with px Group (px) – an organisation that’s made its name managing complex energy and industrial assets in the UK and beyond.
“Atom understand our business and the critical nature of our work. To date, they’ve strived to provide us with the resource we need, within the timescales we set and the level of care required for those scenarios.
“Atom have always stepped up to the plate to handle whatever we’ve asked of them.”
– Mark Willis, Head of ICT px Group
px Group operates high hazard, high risk assets such as gas plants, power stations, fuel terminals and chemical parks on behalf of their clients and themselves. As a trusted Operations and Maintenance (O&M) provider, px is focused on improving the performance of commercial and industrial facilities in a safe, efficient and environmentally conscious way.
In addition to its O&M work, px also offers engineering and project management services, as well as working in energy trading and energy transition management. As Head of ICT, Mark Willis, explains, finding the right service providers and suppliers is vitally important for an organisation operating in critical infrastructure:
“The nature of our business requires us to be connected 24/7, 365 days a year. In this industry, any downtime or inability to deliver can have disastrous consequences, so we need partners who are responsible and responsive.
“In the last decade the company has grown from around 250 members of staff to a current head count in excess of 1,000 with a footprint that now stretches beyond the UK to Europe and North America. That has required us to work with suppliers who can help us build capacity quickly across various aspects of our ICT.
Mark first engaged with Atom in 2022 to address px’s fast-evolving telephony requirements. He says,
“We used to just deal with the large telecommunications companies – Vodafone, EE and O2 – but due to the nature of these providers, it was difficult to work consistently with them as there were often sites that couldn’t be serviced by one provider or another. As a result, it made more sense to work with a company able to manage our requirements across multiple sites in a more cohesive way.
“Atom certainly have given us that level of service and attention to detail. We simply can’t work with a supplier that treats us as another number or a contract. We need true partners.”
px Group’s mobile phone management had historically been handled by an internal Support Manager but, as the business scaled up, the number of handsets within the business grew from roughly 60 to in excess of 500.
For Mark’s team, the day-to-day management of phone contracts represented quite a burden – and one that they identified as an unnecessary drain on internal resource. As a result, call plans, mobile estate assessments, porting contracts, user changes, issue management and other ongoing mobile admin were outsourced to Atom. As Mark explains, px were pleased to find that this process was a seamless and pain-free one:
“Atom’s Managing Director, Dean Cowens, and his team provided a fully-managed mobile service that handled all our needs.”
More trust. More responsibility
The initial engagement on telephony provision gave Mark confidence that Atom could offer the same high-quality customer service across other ICT requirements. Fast-forward to 2024 and we are now relied on to deliver a number of retained services and project-based solutions for px Group as the organisation grows and evolves.
This has included managed service provision, fixed line platforms and boots-on-the-ground IT support on a number of sites.
Where required, members of our service desk team have been embedded within the px Group ICT team to supplement its capabilities and add bandwidth. Alongside this, Atom Technical Director, Leon Hughes, and Senior Technical Consultant, Rhys Price, have been involved in supporting infrastructure projects.
One additional area of support provided by Atom lies in delivering interim support during recruitment processes. Filling highly skilled job vacancies with quality candidates doesn’t happen overnight. In these instances, we have provided px Group with valuable surge capacity to solve short-term resourcing issues ahead of recruitment. Mark comments,
“We very much see Atom as an extension of our internal ICT team at this stage. Because we are growing so quickly, we need supply chain partners that can help to facilitate that expansion. When we have projects coming online or transition work to complete, Dean and the Atom team been highly responsive and provided us with outstanding service.
“Atom is a trusted partner for px Group. The team are attuned to our needs and our requirements and tailor their service offering to suit. I never get the feeling that we are just another number to them. They always give us the level of attention and responsiveness we need, as and when we require it.”
Atom Managing Director, Dean Cowens, adds,
“The relationship we have built with px Group over a number of years demonstrates not only the capabilities of our team but also our commitment to delivering a personalised and personal service. I couldn’t be more proud of the partnership we have built as both organisations have grown together. It’s also a testament to Mark that he has placed faith in us and implemented a truly collaborative culture.”
Key deliverables at a glance:
- Management of mobile contracts and telephony provision across more than 500 handsets.
- Embedded service desk and managed service provision across a number of sites and projects.
