Serco Leisure Case Study
Serco Leisure reduces carbon footprint by 29% with Energy Management Software Solution Serco Leisure, provider of quality facilities management services to the leisure industry and part of the global outsourcing company, Serco Group PLC, is reducing carbon footprint in their 70 local authority leisure centres. Serco’s specialist knowledge accumulated over many years has combined with VISION Server Energy Management Software from Legend Club Management Systems. Since installing the VISION Server solution Serco Leisure has been able to monitor, benchmark and actively manage daily energy consumption. Through a combination of operational focus, continuous improvement and the insight provided by VISION Server, Serco Leisure has reduced its carbon footprint by 29% and is aiming at a further 5% reduction in the coming year.
From public sector agencies to retailers and financial institutions, organisations worldwide are assessing the current and future impact of their activities on our planet. By 2025, buildings will use more energy than any other category of ‘consumer’. This is a particular consideration in the leisure industry, where leisure organisations, which are typically big consumers of utilities, face challenges that span the management of energy, water, waste, and carbon.
Given the rising cost of utilities and the financial pressures on budgets and income, it is imperative for organisations looking to reduce their costs and carbon footprints to effectively monitor and manage utility consumption.
As a trusted provider of leisure services to local authorities and trusts, Serco Leisure is one such organisation committed not just to the health of its customers but also to the environment; cost effectively delivering high quality services with minimum environmental impact.
Serco’s leisure centres are faced daily with a number of variables that contribute to increased or reduced energy consumption such as weather and patronage, along with energy reduction initiatives. Serco Leisure needed a system that would be able to track and monitor the impact of these factors in real time, in a highly automated user friendly fashion, and able to be standardised on a group wide basis. The system also needed to be able to provide real time alerts to key staff to inform of any outlying performance data to ensure swift intervention where required.
Having considered other software solutions and having found them unable to cope with the complexity of interacting variables and the usability requirements of leisure operators, Serco Leisure selected Legend’s VISION Server Energy Management solution.
Using VISION Server, integrated with the Legend Club Management CRM system, Serco Leisure has been able to draw data from multiple, disparate sources into a central carbon management database and provide real-time insight in to the causes of variations in energy consumption, from increased visitors numbers and extreme weather conditions, to equipment failure, or indeed the successful implementation of new energy saving initiatives. Serco Leisure uses the VISION Server Energy Management solution to set benchmarks for utility consumption and tracks progress against these goals via automatic alarms. Through the intelligent application of these incident ‘alerts’, Serco Leisure responds immediately to potential issues instead of discovering them months later in a review of utilities bills.
Keith Thomas, Managing Director of Serco Leisure comments, “The results we have achieved over the last few years working in partnership with Legend and the VISION Server Energy Management solution speak for themselves. Through a combination of my team’s focus, knowhow and tireless commitment to the purpose of reducing carbon footprint, and this powerful software solution we have been able to make a saving of 29% on our carbon footprint and are well on track to meet our targets of saving a further 5% this year.”
He continues, “We have achieved annual cost savings well in excess of £1 million by monitoring, tracking and benchmarking the way in which our leisure centres function in this key business performance area. These savings are significant in themselves, but equally it is enabling us to be more environmentally accountable, something to which Serco Leisure is 100% dedicated.”
Sean Maguire, Managing Director of Legend Club Management Systems comments, “Serco leads the way in carbon footprint reduction expertise in the leisure industry. It has been a rare opportunity to work with Keith and the Serco Leisure team to harness the best of the software. We continue to work in close partnership to harness its capabilities. By contrast, we have heard stories of other operators having had a leak in their pools only to discover it years later having already lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in water and heating costs. When your facility is leaking energy, time is, quite literally, money. With VISION Server this problem has been solved in the simplest way imaginable.”
Iain HayesCustomer Service Manager
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