I’ve worked with health advisers and school nurses since 2000, having worked for one of the national water cooler companies. I found I had a great interest in schools and the real issues around how pupils had to struggle to get a drink of water during the day.
I felt, however, that I couldn’t dedicate my whole time to the problems that were actually coming to light through my work with schools while working for this company, and I found it frustrating.
In the beginning, I felt there was an absolute necessity to improve drinking water conditions in schools. Back then, schools thought that if they had a bottled water cooler in the staff room, this was all they needed to make them a ‘healthy school’. I believed the problem was that children could only have a drink in toilet areas or from old-fashioned water fountains, and this was unfair.
There was much room for improvement, and with the establishment of Water Smart in 2003, we decided that our company would specialise in the needs of schools and offer a first-class service for each individual school.
When we opened, primary schools were just starting to get onboard with healthy hydration messages, but secondary schools and specialist education centres were quite reluctant, because they thought it would be chaos to have a water cooler in these areas.
But over the last couple of years, we’ve found that secondary schools are busier and we’ve spent lots of time in the school holidays installing coolers into secondary schools. We try to do installations that work best for the school, working on the weekend when schools close.
We offer a basic type of water cooler for a staff room or where there isn’t going to be a huge amount of usage. In some locations, though, especially in secondary schools, we’ll advise the school to install a cooler that will cope with their needs – something sturdy and robust that will dispense enough chilled water and that cannot easily be tampered with by inquisitive children. In secondary schools, we use the EcoSpa – a robust, British-made machine that we feel is best for the job.
In recent years, we’ve found that a lot of water cooler companies are just not looking after schools. They sell into schools and then forget about them. You can’t generalise about schools as a sector, as each one is different. A site survey is vitally important and we do this for free. The important thing is to listen to what the schools really want and offer ongoing support and advice. For example, telling them about sports bottles rather than cups, and so on.
I get a real buzz when I get a call from a school that has just had an install, telling me how happy they were with the work carried out by our guys. It means a lot to me.
Water Smart’s aim is to continue looking after schools as we do now. We’ve just moved into a new unit in Blackburn and we want to continue to expand as we have over the last five years.
We’re a small, family run company recognising the needs of our customers. We now have about 400 customers, the majority of which are schools, and we’re lucky to be growing organically via word of mouth.
We have our northwest base and it’s our aim to grow. Perhaps one day, there’ll be Water Smart branches in other parts of the country. My dream has always been to make Water Smart a franchise organisation, but for the moment, I’m just happy offering a great service to schools in a job that I love!
Established in 2003, Water Smart – based in the northwest of England – specialises in the installation of drinking water systems in all types of schools, from primary age up to senior school and special schools.
© FoodBev Media Ltd 2024