Aycliffe Today Business Aycliffe Today Business Issue 36 | Page 9

The magazine for Aycliffe Business Park | 9
/NEWS
razorblue directors Jonathan Anderson,
Mark Wilkinson and Dan Kitchen.
BUSINESS BRIEFS
HS2 BID ON TRACK
British-based global rail giants Hitachi and
Bombardier are opening up a new High
Speed 2 bid centre in Birmingham to
develop their plans to build an iconic train
for the project.
razorblue expands
national workforce
N
orth-East business IT solutions
provider razorblue has further
expanded its field engineering team,
delivering managed IT services to
organisations across the North and beyond,
achieved using their own employees.
razorblue’s growing reputation has led
to a clutch of new client wins in 2018, with
the company expanding its national field
engineering team to ensure they continue to
deliver the high levels of service they pride
themselves on countrywide.
The firm, which has a number of clients
on Aycliffe Business Park, including the Xcel
Centre, and employs staff at a Teesside base
on Wynyard Business Park, expects this trend
to continue, recruiting across all functions,
and is projected to smash its own ambitious
sales targets for the year.
Managing director Dan Kitchen said: “We
have added a further three engineers in
strategic locations in as many months.
“We can now uniquely say that we’re
able to service businesses in any location
across the country with our own engineers
– something that makes us acutely different
to our competitors, and an ideal IT partner to
businesses with disparate branch offices and
razorblue directors Jonathan Anderson, Mark
Wilkinson and Dan Kitchen.
“We do not believe in third-party alliances
– we use our own staff to deliver our
managed services and have a strict policy of
no outsourcing or subcontracting.
“We can only see our success continuing
– we can point to a customer retention
rate approaching 100% – as our clients
see us as a trusted partner to deliver all of
their IT, cloud, connectivity, telecoms and
business system requirements in a way that
complements their own particular business
challenges.”
razorblue, with offices in Catterick,
Wynyard, Leeds and London, specialises in
managed IT services, cloud, connectivity,
telecoms and business software.
Client satisfaction is paramount to the
firm’s success, an enviable Net Promoter
Score of +68 in the last quarter proof of
their commitment to giving the best service
using their own in-house team of talented IT
professionals.
razorblue has been providing a 24/7 service
to those clients who require round-theclock
support for over three years, as well as
owning and operating their own network
and cloud platform, which allows them to
be 100% accountable for end-to-end service
delivery.
The Work Place marks 10 years with birthday celebration
A
conference centre built on the back
of a £9m inheritance marked its 10th
anniversary with a special celebration.
As revealed in the July-August issue of
Aycliffe Today Business this summer, The
Work Place is the brainchild of Jane Ritchie,
who spent her own working life as a careers
adviser and was awarded an MBE for
her services to Durham County Council’s
Education Business Partnership, which she
managed.
Wensleydale-based Miss Ritchie was
unexpectedly informed she had been left an
eye-watering £9m by her cousin Margery
Freeman after she had passed away at
the age of 100, and invested most of it in
creating The Work Place.
The centre which sees 15,000 people a
year walk through its doors celebrated its
10th anniversary this summer and marked
the milestone with a special event.
“I’m very proud that the Work Place
A team of up to 50 experts from
both companies, including engineers,
designers and environmental specialists,
has been put together to work up the
proposals.
Based at Millennium Point in
Birmingham, overlooking the site of the
planned Curzon Street HS2 station, they
are already developing their concepts
for what will be the fastest train ever
operated in the UK as part of their joint-
bid for the multi-million pound contract.
£12M SKILLS BOOST
A further £12m funding has been granted
to provide employment, education and
training opportunities for young people in
County Durham.
The Durham County Council led
partnership programme, DurhamWorks,
has been awarded the funding from
the European Social Fund (ESF) and the
European Council’s Youth Employment
Initiative (YEI), creating a £29m
programme in total.
DurhamWorks will continue to deliver
support to 16-24 year olds in County
Durham, who are ‘Not in Education,
Employment, or Training’ (NEET)/
unemployed.
NEW BUSINESS PARK
A new private sector business park
capable of attracting up to 6,000 new
jobs, worth £400m to the county’s
economy looks set to move into its first
phase of development.
The unique site on Aykley Heads, set in
mature parkland and with outstanding
views over the World Heritage site, offers
a once in a generation opportunity to
transform Durh am’s economic fortunes.
Already home to Atom Bank, the North
East England Chamber and Salvus House
– Aykley Heads is just a few minutes’
walk from both the city centre and the
main line rail station.
PRAISE FOR BEEP
The Work Place founder Jane Ritchie (right)
with centre manager Angela Wilkinson (left) and
strategic director Sue White.
has been going for 10 years – it’s a brilliant
building and the plan is to keep on going,”
Miss Ritchie told Aycliffe Today.
“Angela and Sue have done a marvellous
job with it, enabling so many people to make
the most of it for a number of different uses.”
A project designed to help County
Durham businesses to make financial
savings through energy efficiency has
been praised by European experts.
Business Energy Efficiency Project
(BEEP) received recognition from the
Interreg Europe programme for the
excellent support it provides to small and
medium enterprises (SMEs).