BLOG: It Takes Insight to be By Your Side | News | Siderise

BLOG: It Takes Insight to be By Your Side

Last year we launched our ‘By Your Side’ initiative, which encapsulates everything we do to support our customers in finding the best passive fire solutions for their projects. This works on multiple levels and is delivered through our three core principles of insight, ingenuity, and integrity. In this blog series, we are going to look more in-depth at each of these elements, exploring what they mean in practice for our customers, staff, and future development— starting with insight.

 

What insight means to Siderise

Insight means understanding each nuance of the specific projects we work on but also the industry we are working in. Construction has always been a fast paced, ever evolving sector and, in recent years, the calls for greater fire protection and collaboration have never been stronger. This has put many of our customers under new pressures. As a global leading manufacturer of passive fire and acoustic solutions for the building envelope, we understand that it is our responsibility to do what we can to stand by the side of our project partners, giving them all the information and products they need to achieve compliance without compromise.

 

The first step in doing this is genuinely engaging with them, listening to what they want and need both now and in the future. We are dedicated to actively gathering feedback to ensure we develop in a way that will truly serve our customers to the highest standards. This is applied on multiple levels and is delivered through a number of key initiatives, such as:

 

1. Collaborative approach on projects

There is no-one-size fits all approach to ensuring the fire safety of a building. Every project presents its own set of challenges and requirements. By working collaboratively with the project team from the earliest design stages, we seek to gain a clear understanding of the building and its specific intricacies, using the information we gather to develop a solution that solves problems, optimises fire performance and results in a fire compliant, and beautiful building, designed to last.

 

2. Sharing knowledge with the wider industry

We also seek to share all the technical knowledge we have gained over the years with the wider industry, empowering designers and contractors alike to expand their own understanding of the issues involved and demonstrate their own commitment to fire safety. For example — in addition to our ongoing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and installation training offer — we’ve recently launched a programme of ‘bite-size’ talks. These free 20-30-minute presentations cover a range of key industry issues relating to fire safety and acoustics and are delivered live by our technical experts. Following on from these online sessions, customers’ learning can be further extended by arranging a full CPD session with us, offering them the chance to gain a greater depth of knowledge. You can explore the topics and sign up for your session here.

 

3. Working with industry bodies

Active involvement in the markets we serve, facilitated through key industry bodies, is a vital part of this commitment to gaining accurate and useful insight. We are currently members of:

 

 

One of our recent ventures in the latter part of 2020 was joining the Light Steel Framing Association (LSFA). We often provide technical advice and supply passive fire solutions that work in conjunction with light steel frame (LSF) systems. Therefore, it is important for us to understand how these systems work and what requirements they need to meet to ensure the solutions we provide meet the mark — insight we hope to increase through future collaboration with the association and its members. 

 

4. Customer satisfaction surveys

If you are one of our customers, you will have received a few emails from us this year asking you to take part in our survey. We have been using all the insight gained from this exercise to establish a circular customer feedback strategy, where we listen to what our customers and service users are saying first-hand about our service and products and very quickly develop our approaches and improve our offering in response. This has been supported with further in-depth conversations with key customers, where we can ask questions tailored to their business and experience. This information has also allowed us to determine our Net Promoter Score (NPS) and monitor our performance on a cyclical basis, learning from feedback, and actively embracing ways in which we can better support our stakeholders.

 

Knowledge is power

When we started business 50 years ago, we decided we didn’t want to just manufacture and distribute products. We wanted to become true project partners with our customers and be by their side every step of the way. Gathering feedback, exploring industry issues, and sharing this insight with the industry is a vital part of meeting this aim, helping us all to work together to create safer, more beautiful buildings for all.

 

In our next blog we will explore how we used this insight to create new solutions, tools and approaches, drawing on the dedication and ingenuity of our team.