Carlisle and Siemens Celebrate Six Years of Partnership and Look Ahead to the Next Five

It is absolutely rewarding to see a partnership grow in years, in the work delivered, the trust built between teams and the confidence to keep investing in what comes next.

For Carlisle and Siemens, that next chapter has now begun, with a new five-year agreement covering cleaning services at Siemens’ Ardwick and York rail maintenance depots.

The agreement follows six years of working together across the two sites and brings fresh investment from day one. Carlisle has replaced the existing cleaning equipment with the latest fit-for-purpose machinery for the environments our teams work in, giving them the right tools to continue raising standards across both every day and specialist cleaning.

The new agreement also takes a smarter approach to work that has evolved over the life of the contract. Variable ad hoc specialist and industrial tasks are now being incorporated into the core scope, with current pricing for those activities held for the full five-year term. This alone is projected to deliver over £30,000 benefit for Siemens over the contract term.

Behind a clean depot are Carlisle’s brilliant teams working around engineering activity, responding to changing demands and maintaining environments that rarely stand still.

Six years of growing together

Carlisle began supporting Siemens at Ardwick and York Depots in 2020, and the two sites became an important starting point in the relationship between the businesses. Since then, the service has grown alongside the depots themselves.

Today, Carlisle teams deliver front-of-house, specialist and industrial cleaning across Ardwick and York, moving from offices, kitchens, meeting rooms and welfare spaces into the far more demanding environments of working rail maintenance depots. The wider scope spans sheds, pits, train jacks, wheel-lathe and train-wash areas, while specialist requirements include fuel roads and bunds, boogie drop pits, drainage and stabling-yard cleaning – a service that has become considerably broader and more specialised over the past six years.

At Ardwick, specialist work includes deep cleaning fuel roads, fuel and lube-oil bunds, boogie drop pits, drains and oil reel pits, while York includes fuel-bund, stabling-yard and fuel-road deep cleaning.

The work has become increasingly specialist over time. A good example comes from 2021 when Carlisle was asked to take on periodic cleaning of Ardwick’s fuel point and boogie drop, with further industrial requirements developing as the relationship matured.

That progression has been supported by investment in better ways of doing the job. Carlisle previously introduced specialist equipment for pit cleaning at Ardwick, while the new five-year agreement brings a further refresh of equipment, including specialist scrubbers and pressure-washing machinery.

We are talking about a service that has learned from the previous six going beyond the cleaning contract extension for another five years.

The things you rarely find in a contract

For Mark Neaves, our Regional Contract manager, who has worked on the Siemens contract throughout those six years, the biggest change has not only been the growth in the contract and operational requirements, but the relationships built with the company’s management and engineering teams.

Some of the best work examples are surprisingly simple!

During COVID-19, Siemens provided lunches for everyone working across the sites, including Carlisle colleagues. Our teams have been welcomed to Siemens’ Christmas celebrations and, during the recent heatwave, Siemens arranged for an ice cream van to visit the sites and provide refreshments for everyone working on-site; these are small moments in a six-year contract, but they say rather a lot about the culture and value our teams add to them.

Over time, Carlisle colleagues have become familiar faces within Ardwick and York Depot, working alongside the Siemens teams who keep these environments operating every day.

As Mark Neaves, Regional Contract Manager at Carlisle says,  “Having been involved with the Siemens contract for the last six years, I have seen it grow not only through the SLAs and also in terms of relationships with Siemens management  team and engineering teams. Ardwick and York were our first Siemens contracts, so I am incredibly proud of what the teams have achieved and the confidence we have helped build in Carlisle as a business.”

He adds, “The small things matter too, whether that was Siemens looking after our colleagues with lunches throughout COVID or simply making sure everyone is invited to team celebrations; makes us feels part of the team. That, to me, is what a genuine partnership looks like.”

Five more years worth building on

The new agreement gives Carlisle and Siemens the opportunity to move forward without starting again. This recognition is a great example of what can happen when we build relationships based on openness, reliability and mutual respect.

The teams know the sites and understand the operational pressures alongside specialist requirements from the company. The equipment is being renewed around what the job actually demands, and work that has evolved over time is now being built intelligently into the core service.

Six years in, we have produced cleaner depots, broader capability and relationships strong enough to be felt beyond the wording of the contract. The next five are about building this partnership even further.