About Ridgeway
Ridgeway is a building maintenance company based in Harlow, Essex, with two divisions. Ridgeway Facilities Management looks after housing associations, care homes and commercial offices. Ridgeway Property Maintenance looks after rented homes for housing providers and letting agents.
We cover Harlow, Epping, Bishop's Stortford and the surrounding area. Travel within 15 miles of the depot is free, so most of our customers never see a travel charge.
Our engineers start their first job by 08:00. Before they arrive, they have the site notes, the access rules and the asset register for the building, and every job ends with a written summary to the customer.
How we work
Every job has a reference
Every email about your job, quote or invoice quotes it, along with your own order number.
We say what we know
If we don't know the arrival time, the cost or the fix yet, we tell you when we will, and we call you then.
We own our mistakes
If an engineer is late and we didn't warn you, we say so, and tell you what we are changing.
The team
A small, settled team, split between the office and the vans. These are the people you will deal with.
Paul Whitaker
Director
Runs Ridgeway and leads the engineering and back office teams. Paul looks at every complaint and every escalation himself.
Sarah Cole
Account Manager
Looks after our contract customers: quotes over £1,000, monthly reports, KPIs, quarterly reviews and complaints.
Megan Ellis
Service Desk and Admin
Runs the service desk. Logs every job that comes in, gives it a reference and a priority, books the engineer and keeps you updated.
Rachel Moore
Operations Coordinator and H&S Lead
Plans the week's work and the vans, keeps the RAMS library and the compliance tracker, and approves purchase orders.
Matt Taylor
Engineering Manager
Leads the engineers, checks every worksheet, signs job-specific RAMS and permits, and runs the on-call rota.
Dylan Hart
Multi-trade Engineer
Plumbing, heat pump and air conditioning servicing and building repairs, so a job that needs more than one trade needs only one visit.
Kate Lowe
Finance
Runs invoicing, credit control and the purchase ledger, and answers accounts payable queries.
Claire Hughes
HR and Training
Recruits and trains the team, and keeps the training matrix: every card, qualification and DBS check, with its renewal date.
Our engineers
Dylan Hart
Multi-trade: plumbing, heat pump and air conditioning servicing, F-Gas
Sam Fletcher
Plumbing and heating: gas, hot water and heat pump installation, Gas Safe registered
Lewis Byrne
Electrical, door entry and emergency lighting, and our small works estimator
Priya Shah
Electrical: EICRs, fire alarms and emergency lighting
Tom Akers
Apprentice engineer, studying plumbing and heating at Harlow College
Health and safety
Our health and safety policy is signed by the director and reviewed every year. These are the parts our customers ask about most.
Risk assessments and method statements
Routine tasks are covered by our generic RAMS. Roof work, work above 4 metres, hot works, confined spaces and any job over £5,000 get a job-specific RAMS, checked and signed by the engineering manager.
Asbestos
Engineers check the site's asbestos register before drilling, cutting or lifting a ceiling tile. Where there is no register, they treat the building as if asbestos is present and stop until it is checked.
Stopping work
Anyone at Ridgeway can stop a job they think is unsafe, and nobody is criticised for doing it in good faith.
Lone working
Engineers check in and out of every job in the app, and the service desk calls anyone who has not checked out on time. Live electrical work, roof voids, hot works and towers are never done alone.
Subcontractors
Specialists such as roofers and scaffolders send their RAMS, training cards and at least £5 million public liability insurance before they start, and we keep them on the job record.
Vehicles
Every van is checked before the first job of the day and tracked, and our engineers never use a handheld phone while driving.
Qualifications we hold
Our training matrix records every card and qualification with its expiry date, and renewals are booked well before they run out. An engineer never does work that needs a qualification they no longer hold.
- Gas Safe registration with ACS
- Gas appliances, gas safety records and commercial boiler work
- F-Gas Category 1
- Refrigerant work on air conditioning and split heat pumps
- 18th Edition (BS 7671) and inspection and testing
- New circuits, consumer units, EICRs and fixed wire testing
- BS 5839-1 and BS 5266
- Fire alarm and emergency lighting servicing
- Unvented hot water (G3)
- Unvented cylinders and their safety devices
- Legionella awareness (L8)
- Water hygiene monitoring and temperature checks
- Manufacturer heat pump training
- Mitsubishi Ecodan servicing and Vaillant aroTHERM plus installation
- IPAF and PASMA
- Mobile elevating work platforms and mobile towers
- CSCS and ECS cards
- Held by every engineer
- Asbestos awareness
- Refreshed every year by every engineer
- Enhanced DBS checks
- Renewed every 3 years for care home and sheltered housing work