- As the demand on public charging infrastructure continues to grow in the UK, recent figures show the number of public charge points in the UK has now surpassed at least 80,000 units, with over 3,000 public chargers joining the UK’s network in April alone.
- Combine that with the approximate 1.5 million EVs on UK roads, and around 2 million EV charging sessions are taking place on the nationwide network every month, and that demand becomes increasingly clear.
- With this significant rise, charge point operators (CPOs) are looking to scale up their networks, whilst also increasing reliability and uptime: which is where technology firms such as Barron McCann are looking to fulfil a crucial and ever more important emerging role.
The need for CPOs to keep uptime and satisfaction high has never been greater
Whilst maintaining operational excellence and uptime is key for CPOs to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction and gaining loyalty, but recent legal aspects are also a key concern. The UK’s Public Charge Point Regulations, which came into full force last year, mandate that an operator must achieve an uptime of 99% across the calendar year, averaged out across all of its rapid public charge points. Failure to meet this goal can result in penalties for the CPO, and this reliability target is just a small section of the extensive new regulations.
With the number of public chargers in the UK now exceeding over 80,000 individual charge points, competition between CPOs has never been higher – and outperforming the competition goes beyond simply providing higher levels of uptime. However, with many operators eyeing up significant expansion, particularly in light of reduced planning laws for public charging, in-house maintenance can struggle to keep up with charge point growth, which makes achieving these operational standards easier said than done. External firms are looking to plug that gap, to handle fault diagnosis and repair without the need for extensive in-house engineering expertise.
Firms hoping to fill the operational expertise gap
Barron McCann has already operated in the IT sector for over 30 years, providing support and services to retailers such as Iceland Foods for three decades. However, the firm expanded last year to translate its operational expertise into the EV charging sector. This has been aided by the firm becoming NAPIT (National Association of Professional Installers) registered within the building sector, alongside achieving NICEIC (National Inspection Council for Electrical Installation Contracting) accreditation for its electrification services and an approved installer for OZEV (Office for Zero Emissions Vehicles).
Barron McCann’s key ethos for success within the public EV charging space is having the right engineer, with the right part, in the right place and at the right time. Thanks to its 24/7 help desk and ability to respond to charge point issues right across the UK, Barron McCann is able to set out an agreed service level agreement (SLA) with partnering CPOs, which outlines a guaranteed incident response time. Having these guaranteed timeframes for fixes introduces a level of accountability that simplifies the CPO’s task of complying with new business targets, both those set by legislation and those set within the business.
With growing complexity as CPOs expand their networks, ongoing project management becomes even more crucial. Building on that right place, right time ethos, Barron McCann uses the PRINCE2 project management system to deliver complex projects on time and within budget, managing the multitude of different suppliers and inputs required to deliver a completed installation.
Another strategy that ensures these SLAs can be met is Barron McCann’s expertise in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework, which has traditionally been associated with the IT sector. The firm has translated this framework to EV charging, and much like PRINCE2, this framework looks towards a theme of continuous improvement along the lifecycle of charging infrastructure.
The progress of CPOs so far
Many CPOs in the UK are already achieving significant progress towards operational expertise. Let’s look at CPO Osprey, as an example, which already reports an uptime rate that consistently exceeds 99% across its network.
Lewis Gardiner, Director of Operations at Osprey, commented:
“Osprey made the decision a few years back to develop our own back-office software platform, Osprey Iris. This gives us control over alerting, remote diagnostics and data insights – all crucial to exceeding 99% uptime – and it allows us easy integrations with other operational systems. For customers this delivers the broadest range of payment options of any CPO. Behind the scenes it means we can enhance our operational excellence with high-quality service partners such as Barron McCann. Our in-house software team quickly develops new capabilities, scaling with partners across our network for the benefit of all drivers.”
With the additional operational benefits a partner like Barron McCann can bring to a CPO, it’s a service that more and more charging firms will look to consider as the public charging competition heats up, particularly for new CPOs, or established CPOs looking to make rapid geographical expansions.
