Franchise director Carol Otway provides an insight into the brand’s two decades of success
The gas-elec franchise has grown from strength to strength. We are one of the more established franchise networks in the UK, with 100 franchisees. Our first franchisee has been with us for 20 years and we have provided services to more than a million customers.
We are also full members of the British Franchise Association, Gas Safe registered, members of the electrical safety register and ISO quality assured. Plus we have a very strong head office support team and bureau facility.
In the words of our founder, John Davidson: “Getting people to directly invest in their own futures is a great way to grow a business.”
We operate a two-tier franchise system. The first tier being regional management franchisees, whose responsibility is sales and marketing. They each run one of our 15 regional offices and provide the inspection engineers in their regions with work on a daily basis.
The second tier, the safety inspection engineers, carries out the safety inspections and repairs and other services. It is a legal requirement to have safety inspections carried out in rented properties, giving us repeat business that is almost recession proof.
They need to be hungry for success and want to run and promote their own business. Equally, they need to have a can-do attitude, take advice from the experts in our field and believe in our ethical brand and this tried and tested, successful business.
They also need to have good IT skills and be helpful and respectful while in our clients’ properties.
All engineers are given a postcode area of prime responsibility that is as close as possible to where they live.
But the postcodes are not exclusive to them, the reason being that if they are ill or on holiday, another engineer can step in to cover work, so that we meet our clients’ needs and, more importantly, safety inspection reports do not expire.
Gas engineers need to be already qualified with CCN1 and appliance qualifications. Electrical only engineers need City and Guilds 17th Edition, inspection and testing 2394/5 and, ideally, be time served electricians. Experience is what is important.
We provide training on basic electrics, our IT system, appliance training where appropriate, accounts, customer service, business support, VAT and onsite training with other engineers.
The bedrock of our success is our franchise support structure. We have 14 people in our team, with expertise in delivering all the above training requirements.
In addition, we have a bureau facility that collects in monies from clients, performs credit control functions on behalf of franchisees, pays them twice a month and even works out the VAT for them.
The franchise support team are there to offer help and advice during the first few weeks following their launch and throughout the duration of their franchise. Our engineers are all fully insured, audited in the field by our gas and electrical technical team and all the gas engineers are Gas Safe registered. The investment fee is £16,500 (plus VAT) and equipment and training costs from £1,500 (plus VAT) each.
The equipment covers a laptop computer, gas and/or electrical testers, a full kit of tools, uniform and signage for a franchisee’s van. Engineers are responsible for providing their own van and mobile phone.