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1Life leads the way with
sustainability and energy
support services, backed by Beond

1Life is a forward thinking lifestyle and management solutions company that engages with people in local communities to enhance lives through health and wellbeing, physical activity, learning and the arts.

1Life

They manage over 45 Local Authority venues nationwide that attract around 12 million customer visits per year.  The properties include leisure centres, swimming pools, golf courses, theatres, nature parks and the National Centre for Craft and Design.

They employ over 2000 qualified staff who collaborate to create tailored solutions to help Local Authority clients achieve local outcomes and deliver results.

Energy management achievements over the last 5 years:

1Life has won the UK Active Flame Awards for sustainability and invested £3m across their estate in energy management initiatives since 2009.  Investments included BMS enchantments, pool covers, 5 solar PV installs, VSDs, CHPs and new LED lighting.  This has enabled a 32% reduction in emissions from their original 90 GW energy portfolio over the last 4 years.

Apart from reducing kWs, 1Life also sought new ways to shed the £’s from their £3.3m energy expenditure.  This was achieved by exploring new ways to procure energy and creating efficiency gains by negotiating a bespoke package that delivers quality tendering, risk management, bill validation, CRC and ESOS services from one source.

Our challenge

Beond were introduced to 1Life (formerly known as Leisure Connection) in 2012. At the time 1Life were well embedded with their incumbent broker who they had enjoyed a successful relationship with for 15 years, so the key challenges were clear – prove savings and service differentiations to win the business.

In July 2013 Beond were given the opportunity to present a range of differentiators that would reduce the administrative burden for their energy management team and a chance to compare tender services against 1Life’s incumbent broker.

The objectives included:

  • Reverse engineering the current contracts, to explore hidden premiums
  • Presenting a broader range of hedging strategies to 1Life’s key stakeholders
  • Assessing budget risks v economic risk
  • ‘Profit at risk’ analysis (energy price volatility v net profits)
  • Guaranteed improvements against incumbent broker offers
  • Provide transparent and auditable process for due diligence purposes
  • The provision of complimentary value added services
  • Bureau, AMR, meter management, tender for heating oil and LPG, Winter Annual Ratio Analysis

The Results

  • By presenting the risk strategy workshop, 1Life’s stakeholders were able to establish their preferred hedging strategies which included hedging fixed contacts for 20 GWh of power against flexible contracts for 40 GWh of gas.
  • The use of Beond’s unique online reverse auction process provided improved results against the incumbent broker’s flexi gas offer and fixed HH and NHH offers, equivalent to £82k savings per annum.
  • Based on the tender results, 1Life successfully negotiated a satisfactory service level agreement which included complimentary bureau services, CRC services and metering services as part of a bundled package

Case Study Highlights

By exploring the energy consultancy market, 1Life were able to create additional savings and many efficiency gains by negotiating a bespoke bundled package to support all their back-office needs.  This has allowed valuable in house energy resources to focus on energy management and exceed their carbon reduction targets.

Beond continues to work successfully with 1Life to deliver their energy support services and their services have been extended to include Beond’s ESOS compliance services

 

Beond Services

Beond are a privately owned specialist energy market consultancy – offering innovative and bespoke services to a wide range of energy and carbon consumers. Our business is built on offering tailored energy management and purchasing solutions, supported by our proprietary software and managed by our dedicated team of experts.

Our staff are the key to our success and significant investment has been placed in recruiting and retaining the best talent in the industry sector – with our Consulting Directors holding an average of 20 years’ individual energy market expertise and experience.

With over 500 major energy consumers under management we have an excellent track record in delivering:

  • Innovations in energy procurement to deliver best value to our clients
  • Dedicated portfolio management and on-going data collation and analysis
  • Tailored and bespoke risk management hedging strategies – able to adapt to the ever changing markets
  • Studies on the impact of future changes to an organisation to mitigate risk
  • Structural site works, upgrades and network connections
  • Bill validation, reporting and analysis
  • Compliance to carbon schemes such as the CRC and ESOS with an excellent track record of success
  • Innovations in energy management to bring bespoke solutions with strong financial return
  • Energy auditing and technology services to introduce the right technology to reduce energy consumption

For more information regarding our latest innovations please contact the consultancy team on 020 8899 7385.

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