Case Studies

American Towers are a global provider of wireless communications infrastructure they offer solutions and services to deploy and support wireless networks in 25 countries located on six continents, being named as one of the World’s Most Admired Companies in 2022 by FORTUNE magazine. Finding telecoms talent at leadership level in an international marketplace that is under-pressure and where skills are scarce, is a constant challenge. Since 2008, Fuel Recruitment has built a strong partnership with American Towers and has achieved a great understanding of their needs and the skills required across the business in Europe and Africa to recruit fresh talent for their organisation where they need it most urgently. To date, Fuel Recruitment have made over 24 placements at a senior level on an exclusive or retained basis. Our success stems from the relationships we have built since first making contact, understanding the international telecoms marketplace built on Fuels reputation and developing productive relationships in country within the business.

Overview In 2021 the government made the decision to build a new, very high volume ‘megalab’ in Leamington Spa as part of its response to COVID-19 and the large demand for testing. This lab would form a key part of the UK’s national infrastructure to respond to future epidemics as well as adding diagnostic capacity for other critical illnesses, including cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.   The Challenge This new megalab will generate employment opportunities in the local area and, once fully staffed and operating at full capacity, will have a skilled workforce of up to 2,000 people. It was recognised that to fulfil their recruitment targets, they would need a local recruitment business to assist with their goal. Our combination of local geographical knowledge and in-depth Life Sciences recruitment skills ensured that Fuel Recruitment were the only local recruitment business who were engaged to assist in recruiting the workforce for the laboratory.   The Solution In January 2021 we started a recruitment drive for Lab Technicians, Biomedical Scientists, Data Scientists, Quality Professionals and Lab Managers. As well as supporting the megalab we were soon asked to recruit for Bracknell and Plymouth NHS Lighthouse Laboratories.   The Outcome The megalab opened in Royal Leamington Spa in June 2021 and is the biggest of its kind in the UK, playing a vital role in efforts to combat the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). The lab was named the Rosalind Franklin laboratory. In 2021 we supplied over 250 lab workers to the UK network of Lighthouse laboratories and were ranked the number one supplier in our area of expertise. With the introduction of over 250 lab workers in 2021 and the continuing support of those contractors in 2022, we feel honoured to have played a part in helping to staff the laboratories in which over 5 million PCR tests have been carried out. Every test is important in reducing the transmission of the virus in our communities and helps to understand our progress in controlling the pandemic. The significant boost in diagnostic capabilities within the laboratories will also be used for other critical illnesses including cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases which will help save the lives of generations to come.

Overview Are a specialist managed services provider with a unique culture. Working as one big family, they support a range of clients with leading-edge technical solutions across EMEA. They utilise highly-skilled Technical Architects, Engineers and support staff, to work in a cohesive, pro-active professional services team who really enjoy working and achieving the goals of the business. In addition, the senior management and Directors are “hands on” and experts in their own right, leading from the front and challenging candidates at interview to demonstrate their capability. Panoptics demand excellent technical knowledge from new employees both on a permanent and contract basis. Quite simply, they are not your average IT service provider.   The Challenge Panoptics demand the highest standards technically and are passionate about the customer experience being the “best in class”. With this ethos, Panoptics win significant complex Programmes, one of these recent wins required the demerging of a client’s entire business operations further to an acquisition by a global household name. This required the UK entity to take complete ownership of all IT and operational systems. The speed of decoupling the companies was of paramount importance, and an agreed term was fixed – set by the client’s CEO as part of their business strategy as it was critical to give them the agility and freedom necessary to grow the business following purchase.   The Solution To facilitate the swift demerger, Panoptics used Fuel as the recruitment partner to provide contractors across the UK at the client sites, with the ability to get the job done and extensive merger and acquisition experience. Our contractors were also involved in the wider IT programme covering business applications and technology operating models. This also involved M&A IT migration experience. As with any demerger, the complexity of the task and the timeframe necessary to build new systems and decouple old are short and business critical. This work fell perfectly into Fuel’s specialisms, where our technical resources not only supported and delivered consultants to help shape and define the IT Strategy but also helped to deliver everything in between to make that strategy a reality. In addition, so that BAU work could continue for the client, resources were provided to work across Bank Holidays and weekends to ensure the national programme was completed.   The Outcome Our client said: “This proved a significant challenge from a technology perspective from the outset. Whilst we knew existing IT systems were closely integrated and complex, we had to ensure the right resources were utilised. We also had to consider implications on the Client, with out of hours working to ensure the smooth transition from one to the other. We are confident that the project has been a great success and our client now works with an IT environment that befits an ambitious, forward thinking organisation.”

Overview The Cabinet Office acts as a provider of key government transactional and publishing services to millions of citizens, to businesses and to other parts of government, also as the lead on civil service reform and cross-government collaborative working. The Programmes delivered are large, complex and also generate efficiencies, reform and growth. Digital transformation plays a critical role in transforming the way government operates. The resourcing needs of such programmes require efficient and urgent response for contingent resources by Fuel Group. The Challenge The Cabinet Office needed the Fuel Group to provide specialised digital consultants with the highest levels of security clearance, with a significant number of niche Digital skills ranging from Programme Management, to Software Development, Digital Strategy, Transformation and Communication across large Government Programmes. These consultants operated at a variety of levels of expertise, many with unique and niche skill sets, which are in high demand across Homeland security. The Solution Fuel Group have a dedicated team of SC/DV specialist Recruitment Consultants and they were able to use a range of specialist resourcing strategies to source interims not only with the necessary sector experience and track records, but also with relevant Security Clearance experience across the Intelligence Agencies. This also involved working hard to promote the value proposition of the Security work across the Cabinet Office and Central Government in order to engage with candidates and differentiate these Programmes. Key roles included

• Programme Managers
• Communications Director
• Platform Engineers
• Change Managers

  The Outcome This project was delivered successfully and as a result Fuel Group are an on-going direct recruitment partner with the Cabinet Office, having provided a significant team of consultants across the UK on secure sites.

CityFibre are a Telecoms business who are passionate about offering a “Full Fibre” solution to 100% of the UK and are encouraging a move away from “Fake Fibre” and historic Copper Networks. Fuel Recruitment were engaged to initially supply a Permanent Recruitment solution in partnership with CityFibre’s existing internal Recruitment Team. The strength of the partnership between the 2 businesses soon meant that Fuel’s offering rapidly extended to salary benchmarking, market mapping and consultancy services across the CityFibre business. Within a very short period, Fuel had successfully placed 20 candidates. CityFibre needed to grow Teams of 10 – 15 staff in 26 Cities in a 12-month period. In total this equated to over 350 positions. These positions were all UK based covering a number of towns and cities from Aberdeen to Portsmouth. Location challenges, the sheer volume of roles and skills shortages all posed issues that Fuel Recruitment assisted CityFibre with by creating strategic plans to source the best talent. Fuel Recruitment dedicated a team of Consultants and an Account Director to the CityFibre Project. Weekly key performance indicators were introduced by Fuel Recruitment to monitor progress and success in conjunction with the Internal Recruitment Team at CityFibre. Members of the Fuel Recruitment Team worked onsite at client offices across the UK in addition to attending Expo’s, Conferences and Events with CityFibre to enable them to learn as much about the business and the challenges as possible. Fuel Recruitment remains a key trusted Recruitment Partner of CityFibre as we move into the next phase of the recruitment program maintaining a weekly onsite presence and providing the services detailed above, salary benchmarking, market mapping, consultancy and market feedback. Placements have been made across the Commercial, Contracts, Network Delivery, Design and Project Support Teams due to an in depth understanding of CityFibre’s requirements Understanding CityFibre’s business challenges has been fundamental to the success of this campaign to find the best talent and challenge the standard recruitment model.

Overview Telent is a leading technology company delivering ICT, mission-critical communication networks, operational systems and services across the United Kingdom.  Fuel Recruitment have worked with Telent since 2009, assisting them with their contract and permanent recruitment needs.   The Challenge In October 2018, Telent approached Fuel Recruitment to work in partnership with them on the National Road Telecommunications Systems (NRTS) Project. This is a £500,000 million project for Highways England spanning for 7-9 years, ultimately providing the technology and services to keep England’s roads moving. The technology involved includes: 145 transmission stations, 5,000 cabinets, 3,000km of fibre, 3,200km of copper, 3,000 CCTV cameras, 7,000 emergency phones, 3,500 signs and 4,000 MIDAS Loops managing the traffic flow. Telent needed to create an entire new business unit of 300 people to be completely dedicated to the NRTS project and they needed to be recruited within 3 months in order to hit project milestones. These were high level, highly technical IT and Telecommunications roles including: Qlikview Developers, Test Managers, Test Leads, Test Engineers, Software Developers, Senior Technology Engineering Manager, Data Architect, Release Managers, Technical Authors, Infrastructure System Design Engineers, OSS Alarm System Design Engineers, Application Specialists and Service Management Architects.   The Solution Fuel Recruitment dedicated a team of Consultants and an Account Director to manage the entire process, work on the vacancies and liaise with Telent’s own internal recruitment team. Weekly update meetings attended by all stakeholders ensued to discuss progress, adherence to KPI’s and successes. Telent’s internal recruitment team adopted space in Fuels offices to enhance cooperation and further develop the partnership.   The Outcome Fuel Recruitment are a trusted Recruitment Partner of Telent and are well known as a reliable source of quality candidates and excellent Customer Service. Telent were able to deliver on all NRTS Project milestones due to the successful recruitment partnership. Telent’s internal recruitment team won a prestigious award from Highways England and Fuel Recruitment were highly praised for their involvement in the project.

Overview The MOD embarked on a demanding programme to replace their outdated and diverse IT systems to the single structure Defence Information Infrastructure (DII). It is the single biggest infrastructure project in Europe and when complete, over 300,000 users will be connected to the system via 150,000 User Access Devices (desktops, laptops or mobile terminals) across approximately 2,000 MOD sites around the world with deployed and maritime platforms.   The Challenge The Fuel Group were engaged in order to provide fresh talent for the programme at a time where there were significant skills shortages. We mobilised a significant pool of Security Cleared (SC and DV) Project, Programme & Portfolio Managers, Infrastructure Specialists, Software Developers and Technical Architects and deployed them in locations across the UK (including Scotland, West Midlands and the South West) on a contract basis.   The Outcome At its height we had over 100 contractors on the project and not only did we manage the entire recruitment process from start to finish, The Fuel Group also assisted our client with gathering all of the paperwork required to transfer clearances – ensuring an extremely smooth onboarding process.

Overview The existing Rolls Royce datacentre had been in place since the late 1980s and was no longer fit for purpose. Rolls Royce contracted Hewlett Packard to migrate and modernise their disparate technology clusters within the existing datacentre and migrate to a pair of world-class, modern, highly resilient and secure HP datacentres. Hewlett Packard did not have the in-house expertise required to deliver certain technology silos on the programme and required external assistance as they were in danger of missing key deadlines.   The Challenge Fuel Recruitment were approached and asked to supply a team of 30 contractors comprising of Technical Architects, Technical Leads and Project Managers. Our team had to be available immediately as they were required on site within 2 weeks of the initial request and due to the nature of the Rolls-Royce business and the urgency of the role, the whole team had to be SC cleared. Our team were required to have high-level skills in Wintel Infrastructure, Virtualisation, SAN and Backup Solutions, UNIX Infrastructure, Cisco Network Infrastructure, Oracle and SQL and their remit was to design, build and migrate the new datacentre infrastructure and decommission the existing infrastructure.   The Solution The success of any project is largely dependent upon the quality of the brief. We staged a briefing with our client where we established the core criteria of the requirement, the capabilities required to carry out the requirement and also to gain a greater understanding of the organisational culture, values and policies of our client. On a daily basis we held a resource meeting internally to discuss the progress and challenges of each of the roles and this enabled us to allocate resource effectively, ensuring we met the needs of our customer. Within the space of 2 weeks, our Consultants had identified and vetted the entire project team – all with the required level of Security Clearance.   The Outcome The team worked with the HP programme board, Rolls-Royce project managers and the Rolls-Royce Architecture Review Group to design solutions that met the new architectural standards required and the entire team were instrumental in the success of the programme. They delivered some of the first key phases within 7 weeks, even though the suggested timescale was 7 months, saving the end client an estimated £1 million.

MIRA are a global provider of pioneering engineering, research and test services to the automotive, defence, aerospace and rail sectors. They have one of the most advanced engineering test facilities for energy efficiency and electrification, security product testing and safety systems engineering, self-mobility and autonomous vehicle technology, vehicle resilience, cybersecurity and defence. Finding engineering talent with the many diverse skillsets needed, in a market that is under-pressure and where skills are scarce, is a constant challenge. Since 2003, Fuel Recruitment has built a strong partnership with MIRA and has achieved a great understanding of their needs and the skills required across the business in order to recruit fresh talent for their organisation where they need it most urgently. To date, Fuel Recruitment have made over 170 placements at MIRA. Our success stems from the relationships we have built since first making contact – developing productive relationships within the business, achieving a great understanding of their needs and by maintaining consistent contact, with frequent site visits and providing ongoing recruitment expertise that is well-tailored and quick to match the evolving needs of their business.

Arqiva is a leading UK communications infrastructure company. An independent provider of telecom towers, with circa 8,000 active sites across Great Britain, they are also the only supplier of national terrestrial television and radio broadcasting services in the UK. Their advanced networks support the exponential growth of connected devices and the ever-increasing demand for data from smartphones to tablets through to connected TVs and smart meters The digital switchover programme (DSO) was the largest broadcast engineering project ever undertaken in the UK; everyone in the UK who watches TV was affected. This was a five-year programme across the entire UK from the tip of Scotland, across NI and Wales to the south of England with an investment of £630 million and 1,200 man-years of work. Fuel were responsible for the vast majority of resource used on the project from Project Managers, Site Managers, Antenna Engineers, Electrical Engineers, Health and Safety officers, Transmitter Engineers and Programme Directors. Fuel placed over 475 permanent and contingent candidates over the 5-year period to meet the demand of the DSO Project.

• Digital switch over brought digital terrestrial TV to homes across the length and breadth of the UK
• 1,200 man-years of work over a five-year period
• New masts in five separate locations
• Decommissioned 80 former low-power digital TV sites and 1,154 analogue systems

“The project is on-time and has run brilliantly smoothly. Switching to digital TV provides people with more channels while freeing up valuable spectrum.” Ed Vaizey – UK Government Communications Minister