Support and Statement for Coronavirus, Covid-19

Apogee's Official Statement regarding our support services for the NHS

Apogee’s primary focus is the health, safety and wellbeing of our employees, clients, their families and communities. We are specifically prioritising the NHS, Health Care and Emergency Services and would like to inform you of our current process and procedures regarding our services, where our employees attend your sites in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic.

On-site Engineers

To reduce and minimise the risk of our employees transmitting and contracting Covid-19 we have implemented following requirements. All Apogee employees, including Engineers, on-site support, field workers have been advised to follow government and NHS guidelines relating to Covid-19 that include;

All employees, engineers, on-site and field workers have been instructed to ‘self- isolate’ upon displaying any government advised symptoms of the virus

All employees, engineers, on-site and field workers have been instructed not to attend NHS, Health Care and client sites if they have come into contact with any individual confirmed or suspected of having the virus and to immediately self- isolate

All employees, engineers, on-site and field workers have been advised to comply with government guidelines in minimising ‘social contact’ and applying the safe and social distancing of minimum 2 meters

If one of our employees has previously attended NHS sites and is displaying symptoms of the virus, they will report internally as to where they have been (departments/buildings etc.) in the 3 days prior to showing symptoms. This will be immediately communicated to the NHS site.

With immediate effect, Area Supervisors or Regional Service Managers will keep in daily contact with all resident NHS engineers as a “duty of care” and as a means of monitoring device reliability, reporting any exceptions or areas for concerns to the senior management team.

Suspension of ‘Pro-Active’ Maintenance

On-site engineers have been instructed to move to re-active support and maintenance with immediate effect. This means they will no longer carry out floor walks but will instead respond to calls placed ‘as and when’ therefore reducing their movement within sites to limit the potential of contracting and transmitting infection.

Field Engineers

Where it is necessary for field engineers to attend site, we have set in place the following (in addition to the above) to reduce the possibility of introducing the virus to NHS sites

All Apogee engineers have been instructed to avoid contact with other engineers and maintain the safe and social distancing of minimum 2 meters

Each support call, after initial triage and attempted remote resolution resulting in a field engineer’s site visit will be pre-qualified prior to engineer attendance, to determine if anyone at site has signs of the virus or has anyone recently self- isolated from that site. Where we identify this is the case, Apogee will ask supplementary questions relating to actions taken, such as the application of sanitisation services before confirming attendance. Please note we may reserve the right to decline attendance, however we will do everything we can to remedy a failure or provide contingency services.

All engineers, together with all Apogee employees have been instructed to take their breaks away from others and apply safe and social distancing of minimum 2 meters

Office and other employees unable to work from home have been separated according to government guidelines and applying all hygiene and safe, social distancing of minimum 2 meters

Devices in ‘isolation’ or ‘lockdown areas'

Apogee engineers, in line with our own Human Resources guidelines and commitment to employee safety and wellbeing will not be permitted to enter areas identified as in ‘isolation’ or ‘in lockdown’ and recording and categorising devices by serial number on our systems in these areas. Should a device in one of these areas require engineer attention then NHS staff would be responsible for deep cleaning the device before placing it in an area where our engineer can safely attend. The device would then be brought back to working condition, either at site or off site where required and returned to an agreed safe area where NHS staff would once again deep clean before returning to the isolated area.

Hot Swap Devices

Where a “Hot Swap” device requirement is identified for business continuity purposes and as part of Service Levels (SLA’s), we will provide ‘Hot Swap’ devices as deemed necessary. Once installed, devices will remain in situ, providing the pre agreed functionality until the original device is repaired and both parties agree the original device can be safely re-installed.

Out of Hours Support for Software, Solutions

If there is a significant failure with your printing solution e.g. multiple devices are unable to securely release printing, provide scanning you will be able to contact the out of hours support line for software solutions log support requests.
This support number is: 0207 157 9880 and select option 1
For general support in business hours please utilise our client portal in the first instance that can be found at www.apogeecorp.com/client-services/