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OFFICE SPACE NORTH DORSET
It’s been another busy month around the centre. We had a lot of viewings on our final vacant office, and I’m pleased and proud to say that we are currently 100% occupied!!
Welcome to our most recent business Belle Care Ltd who are taking their first office space for this start-up company. We offer a warm hello to Arabella and her team. Belle Care is an introductory Care Agency that arranges Live-in and Respite care services for those wishing to continue living at home and needing support to do so. I’m sure we’ll hear more as they get up and running.
On Monday, 11th November, we paused together for a two-minute silence to remember and honour those who have served. It was lovely to have some of our wonderful colleagues join us in reception for that moment of reflection.
We had our annual announced fire drill on Wednesday 19th. These drills are vital for everyone’s safety, and everyone’s cooperation helps things to run like clockwork, so we were very efficient and back at our desks in no time. Every business which occupies a physical space is responsible for their own Fire Risk Assessments so these drills can work as part of our onsite business’s individual plans as well as ours. Thankfully this time, it didn’t rain and everyone was superbly good humoured.
Anne and I had fun with our new carpet cleaner and give Ridley Room (our largest meeting room) a going over this month. Now that we have the kit, other areas of the centre may also get a spruce. Our contract cleaners do the carpets throughout the communal areas in the period between Christmas and New year every year, but it will be nice to be able to sort the odd coffee spill in the corridors.
We have a rolling maintenance plan at the centre, ensuring that nothing gets overlooked for too long. Recently this included replacing one of our gas central heating boilers every year until all 5 have been done. It will soon be time to start again! Total Energy Services are about to update some radiator controls in Block 2 and we welcomed Wessex Carpets back into the centre again to replace our final area of communal corridor carpet in lower Block 3.
And it doesn’t stop there. We’ve just agreed a quote for the next stage of the window replacements at the centre too. Having completed Lower and Upper Block 3, and Block 1, the rear of Block 2 will have all new UPVC windows in the spring. It’s all go!
Take a look around our wonderful centre: https://realsee.ai/LNwwVwMY
In more bizarre findings – Two mysterious dinosaurs appeared in Block 1 kitchen at the beginning of the month and got up to all sorts…
But as quickly as they arrived, they left with no goodbye. You can always rely on the Wincombe Kitchens for aa fun interaction or two!
Did you know that we have 37 different businesses at the centre in physical offices at the centre, Friars Moor Vets Clinic and an additional 23 virtual businesses who are work from home businesses that use our professional address and centre facilities! We’ve got estate agents, mortgage advisors, jewellery makers, IT service providers, accountants, bookkeepers, recruitment consultants, counsellors & therapists, beauticians, construction companies, oil safety experts, acupuncturists, carers, VoIP phone service providers, Independent financial advisors, and even a podiatrist(whom we are looking forward to welcoming back soon)! It’s such a mixed bag of expertise. So many interesting people.
We love the diversity of businesses we have here. We caught up with Adrian Exton from Bluesight Systems who’s been at the centre since 2016 to find out what they are all about: Here’s what he told me..
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“Bluesight Systems has been around for nearly 20 years and for most of that time has been selling image processing applications to retail and advertising customers. We deploy technology that can understand how people move around a space and to gather demographic data, all within strict GDPR rules.
It’s perhaps easier to explain what this means with a couple of examples.
Harrods moved from having lots of advertising screens all around the store to having fewer, larger screens and they needed to show their advertisers that they were still able to reach large audiences. We installed systems on various floors and discovered that peak traffic times were in the late afternoon, which is not the case with most stores. Harrods produce post-campaign reports to advertisers showing not only the number of people who could have seen the ad, but their age and gender as well. This approach can ensure that ads are reaching their intended target.
Another example might be the work we did with Ocean Outdoor and Women’s Aid, back in 2015. It was to support a campaign highlighting the need to call out domestic abuse. Quite an emotional subject – best described in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu9M-ZwImyI . We provided the ‘magic’ technology to be able to find faces in a crowd and display them on the screen, but with privacy in mind.”
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Wow. Powerful and interesting stuff Adrian. Thank you for sharing that. It’s fascinating to find out just what our businesses get up to behind the scenes.
And just like that, we find ourselves at the end of November. I know we say this every time but.. boy doesn’t the year flash by!
