Blending the best of both worlds

WME Director of MEP, Nicholas Byczynski, states that cost should not hinder innovation as the sector moves to reach a “new normal” for operations

- Nicholas Byczynski

WWME has had to tear up the manual in response to Covid-19 – so says director of MEP Nicholas Byczynski – but that doesn’t mean the firm isn’t optimistic about what the future holds.

Byczynski states that WME has not reported a single positive coronavirus case among its workforce, and is continuing to demonstrate agility in the face of adversity.

“It’s been a very difficult period that has required us to completely reorganize how we deliver our work, deal with a global pandemic and deal with extremely difficult commercial situations with many clients requesting fee discounts and cash collection slowing dramatically,” he said.

“All of this puts pressure on people mentally and physically so well being of staff is priority number one.

“We have a great number of engineers out on-site and they have generally continued to attend through the entire period.

“They deserve enormous respect for doing so and I know it can’t have been easy for them. We have been fortunate to have not had any cases within the WME business which is a testament to the careful H&S procedures put in place across our sites.”

A major change that businesses across all sector shave been forced to embrace is remote working.

Byczynski says that at WME, work is already being undertaken to assess the long-term viability of home working, and whether a reshaping of the old business model is now a necessity.

“The obvious change has been a move to a work from home model across all of our offices,” he said.

“This was implemented at WME very early around mid-march as we were confident that we could make it work and to be honest I’ve been incredibly impressed with how quickly and well the team have adapted to this with multiple projects being delivered very successfully without the usual face to face collaboration we would expect.