Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, our Shared Engineer team have successfully provided a continuous service to our schools.
On the announcement of the first national lockdown in March, we immediately adopted new ways of working. Rather than our normal scheduled visits, we provided remote IT support – monitoring and maintaining school ICT networks alongside providing on-demand IT support to school staff via email and telephone calls and visiting school sites where necessary.
With the proposed re-opening of schools in July, we provided onsite IT network health checks in order to ensure that everything was ready for the return of the year groups. Normality returned a little during the summer months and as they would usually do at this time of year, our team spent their days carrying out critical network upgrades and updates in their designated schools. With several Microsoft operating system versions reaching end of life this autumn they were all very busy.
The return of the full cohort in September enabled us to again provide our scheduled onsite sessions. Adhering to individual school Risk Assessments in conjunction with our own Covid-19 work practices has allowed us to be able to work within schools and continue to provide our valued service. Working within the confines of reduced access and class bubbles does present problems and places additional pressure on our engineers to complete work within tight timeframes but we have risen to the challenge and the team have shown themselves to be flexible, resourceful and committed in these difficult times.
With the focus on making devices available for home learning we are currently offering schools additional time as and when available to ensure that these devices are set up and ready for the children to use as quickly as possible.
Please log a call on our Shared Engineer Portal if you require any devices to be set up
We would like to say a huge thank you and well done to everyone involved during these challenging times. The dedication from our teams and the cooperation and understanding from our schools has been unrivalled and as we prepare for the cold months ahead we hope to continue to support our customers and staff in the most efficient and safest way possible.