TECH
Duo - UCS Technologies directors Simon Close ( left ) and Paul Kidd .
THE WIGHT STUFF
UCS Technologies passes education test with flying colours
One of the North-East ’ s leading information and communication technology specialists has shown its ability to operate on a truly national scale after successfully completing work on a £ 56m project to deliver five state-of-the-art schools on the Isle of Wight .
UCS Technologies , based at Riverside Park in Middlesbrough , won the contract to deliver the technological infrastructure in two primary schools and three secondaries on the island – installing copper and fibre cabling , telephone systems , core and edge switching and data infrastructure .
And the company won praise from the Department for Education ( DfE ) for its professionalism , delivery and quality of work on the showpiece three-year project .
Alistair Wilcox of the DfE said : “ From the first to the last school , UCS operated as an integrated part of the design and implementation teams .
“ They took care to understand the needs of the school and the requirements of the DfE and ensured these were fully incorporated into the building designs .
“ Simon of UCS took the lead in developing detailed designs in partnership with the schools and managed the full ICT implementation process through to school handover .
“ At handover , all schools received full training on the new systems and comprehensive documentation covering the design , configuration and ongoing support arrangements .”
The “ Simon ” the DfE is referring to is Simon Close , director of UCS Technologies , and the man who founded the business in 2010 . He is delighted that the company has marked such an important milestone and accomplishment .
He told Tees Business : “ We have specialised in education over the years and have built up a reputation for what we do , but the batch of schools in the Isle of Wight was something of a statement for UCS Technologies as a company .
“ It showed everyone that we could take on the biggest , showpiece projects – projects about as far away from the North- East as you could be in this country – and still deliver successfully .”
The work of UCS now encompasses the whole of the business spectrum – from traditional builds , as exemplified by Sir Robert McAlpine ’ s traditional build , as could be seen in the Isle of Wight , to the modular builds typified by Elliotts .
Simon said : “ We want to be as versatile as we can be for companies – that means being equally at home providing the technology infrastructure to traditional as modular builds – but perhaps our best USP is that we design solutions and implement them .
“ With many projects , one company will design the infrastructure and another will be given the job of implementing it – at UCS we both design and install and that dovetails nicely with the ‘ cradle to grave ’ approach we take when it comes to delivering for our clients .
“ Design is the key and we make ourselves a one-stop-shop for getting these projects done as seamlessly as possible .”
Each project has to be bespoke because each comes with challenges .
“ These schools had to function and continue operating while we built around them ,” said Simon .
“ That brought its own challenges because you ’ ve continually got to find a way to complete the install while not stopping the pupils from being able to use other parts of the school .”
By far the biggest challenge for UCS Technologies , though , was the geographical one .
“ It ’ s a long way away from the North- East ,” smiles Simon . “ We had two project managers there working on the contract and I was flying down regularly to oversee and make sure things went smoothly .”
All that hard work has been worth it because , having proven its worth , UCS Technologies is very much in demand in the education sector .
“ We are currently working on 14 schools , doing the same work as we did on the Isle of Wight ,” said Simon .
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