Stannah 150 Staff Portraits – Fraser Pengelly
A wise head for a new department –from 150 years and beyond…
Fraser Pengelly is the manager of Stannah’s latest service department, Loading Systems. He joined the company in 2016. He is one of a long line of Stannah employees who was introduced to the company by a friend and previous work colleague.
Fraser Pengelly, Loading Systems Department Manager – based in Halesowen.
Fraser explains:
“I was ready for a new challenge and the opportunity came up at the right time in the right place. My previous employer was asking me to relocate and I have moved about a lot throughout my working life and was settled near the Halesowen branch of Stannah Lift Services. So, the location combined with the opportunity to use all my skills and knowledge to grow business for Stannah just fitted perfectly.”
As a young man Fraser began his working years as a pricing and estimating clerk for a glazing company. It was not something he saw himself doing for very long. He soon threw everything into developing his own industrial door business. Personal circumstances called for a complete change and so Fraser moved to the Canary Islands and into property management, later returning to the UK to hone his present skills with another lift company.
So what attracted him to the Stannah opportunity? Fraser continues:
“My friendship with Andy Miller, Branch Manager for the West Midlands and West Wales region, was crucial in the process. We worked together before Andy moved to Stannah and he saw an opportunity that was born out of our large retail customers enquiring as to whether Stannah could service and maintain their loading bay equipment, as well as their lifts. I was very excited about setting up and leading a new business area. It’s a huge challenge and I am relishing the scale of the potential for growth and new business.”
Fraser is a man on a mission. He’s in the office bright and early every day and every day is different. He is promoting the new service to existing and new Stannah customers, chasing new leads, making site visits, doing site surveys and recruiting new engineers to strengthen the team – and relishing the growth he is creating.
“I love working with Stannah and honestly, sincerely wish I had come across them earlier in my career. It’s a great company with a truly unique (in my experience) ethos. They really do put the customer first. If something goes wrong then we must fix it for the customer and never focus on blaming others. Then we learn and put things right. It’s a supportive and family environment and I have found that the staff all care about the company deeply and consider themselves part of the family. There are brilliant opportunities throughout the company and I would advise young recruits to take all of the wonderful training opportunities Stannah offer to learn and grow with the business.”
The Loading System department is already servicing some large clients in the distribution marketplace.
PPM contracts has been secured with the likes of DSV Road Transport over 5 national distribution centres. We are working with Costco Wholesale, covering part of their considerable national portfolio of warehouses, where we have also carried out some fairly large refurbishments to loading bays. We have already completed works for Sainsburys and M&S through cross selling within the business and are currently in negotiations with many more large companies using loading bays.
And how has your new service gone down with your customers?
“Very well indeed. We have so many opportunities to help our current clients and develop new customers too. It’s a perfect marriage of the lift and escalator service we already provide with another service we can provide on the same site/s. It makes life easier for everyone. Every new contact I make is amazed at the scope of Stannah services and a few stairlift jokes break the ice. When they walk me round their distribution centres I am amazed at the scale of their operations . My new job is doing wonders for my fitness too!”
Contact Fraser on 0121 508 6994 or email him at loading.systems@stannah.co.uk
To find out more about the amazing Stannah 150 story visit www.stannahlifts.co.uk/150