Morris & Spottiswood is a family-owned business providing construction and maintenance services across Scotland, Northern England, and the Midlands since 1925. To reduce unnecessary travel given their diverse services and locations, they implemented partial home working, video conferencing, vehicle tracking, and promoted alternatives like trains, cycling, and public transportation. While facing initial challenges like cultural changes, they benefited from cost savings, improved efficiency and work-life balance, better customer service, and environmental protection.

1. Morris & Spottiswood
Travel Planning
Case Study

2. Morris & Spottiswood
Who are we:
• Family owned business since 1925
• Annual turnover in excess of £100m with > 450 staff
• Offices in Glasgow (head office), Edinburgh & Warrington
• Providing a wide range of services:
– Fitout and Refurbishment
– Maintenance - Reactive and Planned
– Social Housing - Refurbishment and New Build
• Provide cover across Scotland, North England, Midlands & SW
• Staff reside widely across geographical areas with over 90% of our
staff wholly or partly mobile

3. Morris & Spottiswood’s Travel Plans
• Due to very diverse nature of our services and locality of our
business, flexibility is the key to our Travel Plans with a key focus
on reducing the necessity to travel
• For our management teams a partial home working is achieved
through the supply of wireless 3G cards and use of home
Broadband
• Conference call facilities for the operational delivery teams enable
regular virtual team meetings
• Video conferencing at each of our offices minimises travel
• Mileage reward scheme for car sharing during business use
Management Teams

4. Morris & Spottiswood’s Travel Plans
Maintenance travel plans
• Use of vehicle tracking in our maintenance vehicles
enables the routing of the closest technician to attend a
reactive maintenance event
General travel reduction / alternative travel plans
• Use of trains for travel between Scotland & England
• The use of supply chain local to our clients projects
• Use of Cycle to work scheme for office based staff
• Loan arrangements for staff to purchase annual season
tickets for public transport

5. The Challenges when introducing Travel Plans
An example of some of the challenges we faced when
introducing the approach:
• Partial Home working – change of culture in business
• Video and audio conferencing – change of approach of team
meetings
• Introducing vehicle tracking – big brother concerns
• Cost of introducing mobile communications over an
extensive team

6. The benefits of travel planning to Morris & Spottiswood
Benefits:
• Cost savings – fuel, fleet cost, insurance
• Improved staff efficiency – less time travelling / more working
• Better work-life balance of our employees
• Improved service delivery to our customers
• Reduced impact on the environment
• Works towards our aim of ‘A special place to work’

7. The benefits of travel planning to Morris & Spottiswood
Benefits:
• Cost savings – fuel, fleet cost, insurance
• Improved staff efficiency – less time travelling / more working
• Better work-life balance of our employees
• Improved service delivery to our customers
• Reduced impact on the environment
• Works towards our aim of ‘A special place to work’