John Laing Partnership is one of the UK's leading developers and building contractors with a strong reputation for innovative and high quality construction in social regeneration projects. The company was set up following a management buy-out from John Laing Homes.

What was their problem?

Because John Laing Partnership (JLP) had been part of a larger organisation, the company had relied on an in-house IT department. After the management buy-out to form JLP, the company decided to invite external IT companies to support its new, smaller in-house IT operation. This was designed to ensure that there was greater flexibility available to manage the workload, provide cover for holidays and utilise specific skills that were unavailable in-house. JLP has also grown rapidly in recent years, with 150 PCs and 7 servers now in use, so have needed an external company that had experience in helping cope with the extra demands this expansion would impose on the IT system.

How has Connect helped?

Connect’s primary role has been to provide front line helpdesk IT support for all staff. For JLP, Connect developed a flexible support system that meant that any IT problems at the company’s London HQ would be referred to the in-house IT team. All other IT problems at JLP’s various sites around the UK would be handled directly by Connect. The advantage of such an approach was that, for every member of staff, there was just one single contact telephone number to call. Connect has also helped on a wide range of specific one-off projects: developing a disaster recovery system, setting up the latest IT security solution and installing new servers and software. Most recently, Connect has set up a secure broadband network for JLP site managers so they can retrieve emails and access company data even when they are based at one of the regeneration sites around the country.