dmsolutions

The Hub Hornby

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 23:58:04 GMT

The Hub Hornby shopping centre has complex vertical transport needs, with multiple lifts, escalators and travelators catering to the thousands of customers that visit the mall each day. For Centre Manager Jason Marsden, finding knowledgeable contractors with a consultative approach is a big part of keeping the mall running smoothly.

The centre’s previous lifts service agents primarily focused on their own brand of machinery, which wasn’t installed on site at the Hub. As a result Jason found it could be difficult to get the right level of service to quickly resolve issues.

D&M Solutions now take care of the Hub’s monthly maintenance, repairs, and callouts, plus bigger projects and long-term upgrades. They also provide advice and recommendations to support Jason in making the best decisions for the centre.

“[D&M Managing Director Stuart Mitchell] is always available to talk, and of course, he’s got a lot of knowledge,” Jason says. “He’s a person that’s hands-on, and hands-on on our behalf when it comes to talking to overseas suppliers as well - which can be quite an art form in itself.”

When a mechanical issue comes up there are often a range of potential solutions, all with their own risks and benefits. The D&M team work with Jason to present the available options, make recommendations, and implement the solution which will deliver the best outcome for the Hub.

In one case an escalator handrail needed replacing - a job which required a lot of thought despite sounding like a simple repair. Jason says there was “a lot of discussion” around the replacement part.

“Do we go back to the original factory? Do we go to the original factory but specify a better brand of handrail? Do we go off-market and source one independently? [...] We talked through the options [with D&M] and ended up settling on a solution together, which was a good way to go forward.”

D&M are on site at the Hub several times a month for routine maintenance and callouts, and Jason says their responsiveness provides significant benefits to the centre.

“If there is a breakdown they’re always very fast to respond,” he says. “They’re a small enough company that they give personalised customer care, and it’s very responsive, but they’re not so small that they don’t have the skill and the labour resource to service a site of this size.”

Blakely Body Corporate Services

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 23:57:59 GMT

Blakely Body Corporate Services first worked with D&M Solutions seven years ago, when they ‘inherited’ them after taking over a building from another body corporate. Blakely now use D&M to service the lifts and car stackers in all of their commercial buildings, and happily recommend them to other body corporates.

When we asked Director Gillian Blakely why she chose to make D&M an ongoing supplier, the answer was simple: availability.

“D&M goes the extra mile,” she says. “If it’s the middle of the night, they’ll come out and fix things that need to be fixed - and that’s rare, it’s really rare.”

Gillian says being able to rely on the team to respond quickly to urgent callouts saves her an immense amount of frustration.

She recalls an occasion when the on-call engineer arrived on site at 3 a.m., after a lift shaft filled with water - a situation where she says most contractors would “hold fire” until the morning.

“It makes my life with my clients so much easier,” she says. “If they didn’t respond the way they do respond… it’s never pleasant when you get a call from someone who is stuck on the 22nd floor and can’t get in their lift!”

As well as D&M’s prompt response to callouts, Gillian appreciates being able to deal directly with the company owner, rather than being directed to an 0800 number and hoping for the best.

“It’s far supreme than what we’ve had in the past,” she says.

Rendevous Hotel

Thu, 11 Jan 2018 02:12:06 GMT

When you’re responsible for managing one of Christchurch’s best-known hotels, reliable machinery is absolutely critical. We spoke to Rendezvous Hotel General Manager Faisal Sayed about how D&M Solutions has made life easier for his staff and his guests.

Before working with D&M, the Rendezvous team had consistent reliability issues with their lifts, primarily due to an outdated lift controller. The frequent breakdowns left the 22 storey hotel struggling to service their guests; with only two lifts on site, any downtime meant frustrating delays for guests and additional stress for the hotel operations team.

“Somebody would hit [their suitcase] on the lift, it didn’t have the ability to absorb the bang, and it would just break down on the spot,” Faisal says. “The system at the time was not good enough to take all the pressure.”

“It became quite normal for us to have one lift out of order every two days or so. There were massive negative guest sentiments.”

Rendezvous initially engaged D&M Solutions to install a new lift controller, which significantly reduced the number of breakdowns while also improving speed and performance. Faisal says the controller replacement was a large piece of work that required “some serious skills” - and the D&M team was up to the challenge. After the replacement, the D&M team installed a new lift at the hotel and began the ongoing management and maintenance of the lift systems.

“We have had a couple of breakdowns, but it has been leaps and bounds from where we started,” Faisal says. “[D&M Managing Director Stuart Mitchell] is a very helpful guy, very passionate about what he does. We’ve got a great relationship from a contractor/supplier perspective.”

D&M’s reliability and customer service quickly opened doors to a wider relationship managing other hotel services. They began carrying out the hotel’s electrical maintenance and upgrades, including changing transformers and replacing halogen heat lamps with LEDs in the hotel’s restaurant kitchen.

After being consistently impressed with their commitment and level of work, Rendezvous contracted D&M Solutions to take over the maintenance of the hotel’s 50-tray car stacking system.

The car stackers had been responsible for plenty of previous headaches; Faisal remembers mornings spent standing red-faced in the parking lot with guests who were unable to retrieve their cars from the stacker. He admits being slightly sceptical when the D&M team took over the contract, saying initially it was “hard to believe they could manage it.”

“They proved me wrong and in the last year they’ve been managing it very, very efficiently,” he says. “All of those embarrassments have been taken care of now, we have a good system in place.”

Throughout all of the work that D&M Solutions has done with Rendezvous, Faisal says he’s most appreciative of the “extraordinary competency” of the D&M team.

“I want a contractor who knows exactly what they’re doing, is competent enough to know what they’re doing, and is passionate about resolving any issues,” he says.

“They just make it simple and fix it as soon as possible. The swiftness to resolve a problem, that comes from the competency of doing the job - that’s extremely important.”