As National Panel Manager, Jon manages our two panel shops in Sheffield and Hemel Hempstead where him and his team design, build and ship custom BMS panels to our learnd customers. He has more than 20 years of BMS panel experience.
Arriving at the Sheffield office
My working hours can be flexible but I usually get to the office in Sheffield for 6:30 so I’ve got time to check through any emails that have come in and catch up on any new issues before the rest of the team arrive at about 7:30.
Sometimes I’ll go down to Greggs and grab a bacon sandwich with our Projects Coordinator Kelly Drabble and we can give each other updates on what we’ve got on that day. She does all the project purchase orders for me and we’ve got a really good working relationship.
Morning
We normally have a Monday morning catch up to get our plans in place for the week but I’ll usually grab five minutes with Andy Gibbons who is our Panel Quality Manager and Jason Lyon our Workshop Supervisor once they’re in each day as well.
As National Panel Manager I’ve also got to liaise a lot with Mike Young our Panel Designer and Builder down in the Hemel Hempstead panel shop and make sure everything is going smoothly down there.
One of my responsibilities is procurement, so ensuring that we have all the right components for the panels and that everything is accounted for. It’s not necessarily the most exciting part of the job but it’s definitely a crucial one!
Tracking the cost of these components as well as how much we spend on design, labour and delivery for each of our panels is another big part of my role so I have to log all our costs and manage the team’s time sheets to ensure we know how much is being spent on each project.
Afternoon
When I first took the role I told Gareth Barber our Director that I’m not the kind of person who can sit in an office all day and luckily I still have plenty of opportunities to get down to the panel shop. We’re a close team and everyone works hard and knows what’s expected, so it’s great being able to get in there and have a laugh while we work.
One thing that I usually take on is the labelling, we’ve got a label engraving machine which I’ll take and get a set of labels done over a couple of hours. It gets me out of the office and it also frees up the rest of the team to work on wiring and building up the panels.
Creating fully tested, custom BMS panels definitely takes a lot of work but it’s worth it for us when we see the panels get shipped off, knowing that we’re delivering something that’s high quality and that’s going to last.
End of day
Depending on what I’ve got on my plate that day, I’ll sometimes head out to work from home for the last couple of hours while I get on with admin and supporting with any issues either from the panel shops or on site. I always make sure that I’m available if any of the team need to contact me but it’s nice to have that flexibility with my location when I need it.
Since we became part of learnd we’re working with a much wider group of people, whether that’s over teams calls to Glasgow or driving down to visit the team in Hemel. It was an adjustment at first but it’s also a great opportunity to share our expertise and to learn from each other.
Working together across so many locations can be tough but I’m lucky in that the panel team down in Hemel have been really receptive and ready to team up and that the people working above me like Mike Dauris our Projects Director have really trusted me to do my job in the way that works for me and for the team.
