Services & Products
Our monthly focus for July moved down the spine of the country to take a look at our Central Region, covering much of Yorkshire and the Midlands.
With our regional office in Leeds, our lift engineers, technicians and office staff work diligently to maintain the smooth operation of lifts from Harrogate, Halifax and Huddersfield to Loughborough, Leicester and Lutterworth.
Our Central Regional Manager Jimmy Richardson first joined the lift industry 34 years ago and Pickerings has benefitted from his vast experience since 2011.
Having worked his way up from a lift engineer’s mate to repairs engineer and supervisor, Jimmy initially joined Pickerings as our Loading Systems Operations Manager, coordinating loading bay solutions for clients across the north of the UK.
Jimmy was soon promoted to his current role as Regional Manager, where he is responsible for keeping customers moving from Leicester to Leeds.
From time to time, when demand requires, he’ll dust off his tools to help out and keep lifts in action.
Despite being a Leeds fan, Jimmy is an asset to the Pickerings team.
Claire has 17 years’ experience in the lift industry, having worked her way up from administrator to become our Repairs Manager for our Central Region.
Claire enjoys her role coordinating repairs, ensuring engineers respond quickly to demand and deliver a quality and safe service, getting customers’ lifts back in action as swiftly as possible.
Outside of work she is a keen DIYer, applying her project management skills to renovate her whole house. With her can-do attitude and problem-solving skills, you can be confident Claire can get your lift fixed.
As part of this month’s focus on our Central region we made a donation to Leicester Food Bank.
As a nationwide company, we are deeply committed to making a meaningful impact and giving back to the communities that we proudly serve.
Supported by The Trussell Trust, Leicester food banks provide three days' worth of nutritionally balanced emergency food and support to local residents.
Food banks are not only a vital lifeline of food relief during times of financial hardship or crisis but they also offer support and advice to help individuals tackle the underlying causes of their challenges, with the aim of preventing future reliance on food aid.
We hope our contribution makes a big difference to families in need.
As a former nuclear weapons engineer in the Navy, our Central Region Operations Manager Jon Taylor certainly knows a thing or two about engineering and ensuring high safety standards.
He spent 9 years maintaining weaponry on submarines as they carried out deterrent patrols across the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea.
Jon brought his expertise to Pickerings in 2018 where he enjoys coordinating operations to meet customer’s needs and maintaining lifts that are critical to their functions.
As part of our Central region focus, we met up with our lift service engineer Andy as he carried out maintenance and repairs for different customers.
Andy has almost 40 years’ experience in the lift industry and has been with Pickerings since 2017. If Andy doesn’t know it; it’s not worth knowing.
In his previous role as a lab technician, Andy was partly responsible for popularising red onions – a strange claim to fame! He ran tests to understand the vegetable’s yield and prove they could be a justifiable crop for farmers. There are many layers to Andy
We met Andy just after he had repaired a dumbwaiter kitchen lift at a pub in Derby, which was vital to their food service operations.
We joined him in Leicester to fix an out of service lift at a call centre. A quick troubleshoot found that the roller had been damaged, preventing the doors from opening and closely smoothly. Within 15 minutes, Andy had installed a replacement roller and got the lift back in operation – the call centre wasn’t on hold for long!
Our next job was just around the corner, as Andy carried out a service on an access lift at a pet shop. He hopped into action to check the key functions and safe operation of the lift that provided access to their mezzanine vets area. All in order and no additional work required.
Unfortunately, we had to leave Andy at this point, as he was about to carry out maintenance on a staff lift at the back of the store.
Thanks for letting us join you Andy. It was a fabulous insight into the work our engineers carry out and it was a delight to see Andy’s expertise and customer-friendly manner first-hand.
As the month’s focus on our Central region came to a close, we took a look at a couple of local repairs our Loading Systems team carried out.
The nature of loading bays and reversing lorries can often result in impact damage, as it did for a national retailer’s dock at their store in Halifax.
Our engineers were quick to attend, supplying and fitting two new dock buffers, providing protection to the equipment and building itself. They also re-straightened the dock shelter as best as possible. This minimised disruption to operations to allow unloading and loading of goods, whilst awaiting a permanent fix.
When a distribution centre for a well-known car manufacturer reported damage to their sectional door we revved into action.
The sectional door shaft had broken after the bearing had worn down. Our engineers installed a new shaft, bearing plate and bearing – the door was safely back in operation in no time!
We understand how big an impact even seemingly minor issues can cause to our client’s operations so we take great pride in carrying out swift, efficient and top quality repairs.
Throughout April, we headed north of the border to take a look at our Scotland team. From city apartment blocks in Edinburgh and Inverness to hard-to-find hotels in the Highlands and Hebrides, our engineers are well equipped to ensure your lifts are running smoothly.
