Brightmere Energy has established a Field Services operation at Avonmouth, bringing smart meter installation inside a business previously better known for supplying households and answering their account questions. The function was created on 1 April and is led by Craig Bowen, who joined the company last month.
The decision extends Brightmere's direct involvement into customers' homes. An installation requires scheduling, safe access, technical work and an explanation of the equipment. Those tasks will now sit within the supplier's own operating structure, alongside the customer teams that arrange visits and deal with subsequent queries.
Bowen, whose background is in electrical engineering and metering contracting, said the relationship between these activities was central to the change. 'When a customer tells an adviser something that matters for a visit, the engineer needs that information,' he said. 'We want the conversation before the appointment and the work in the home to join up properly.'
He said engineers also needed a clear route back to colleagues when something discovered during a visit required further account work. Customers could judge the company by the person at the door, he said, even when the original concern arose elsewhere in the service.
Brightmere was founded in Bristol in 2011 and began supply in February 2012. Its customer-service operations are based at Filton and, since 2016, Swansea. Creating Field Services adds a different kind of work to the company, with mobile engineers visiting properties rather than advisers handling a queue of calls.
Miles Aldercombe, an independent engineering training adviser, said a supplier taking work in-house would need to allow time for competence as well as recruitment. 'You can provide a vehicle and a schedule much faster than you can build sound judgement,' he said. 'A new engineer needs experienced people to turn to when the job does not look like the example used in training.'
He said communication was part of that preparation. Explaining an interruption to supply, checking what the resident understood and leaving usable information all took place alongside the technical tasks. He did not comment on Brightmere's own training arrangements, which he has not assessed.
The company launched an apprenticeship programme last year. It said the new field operation would provide a setting in which engineering skills could be developed alongside experienced colleagues. Brightmere has not presented the Avonmouth opening as a change to the customer's tariff; the announcement concerns how metering work is organised and delivered.
For the supplier, the immediate practical test will be whether information reaches the right person before a visit. Bowen said the company would learn from appointments as the operation developed. Aldercombe said he would look for evidence that engineers had time to ask for help, including when the safest answer was to stop and clarify what should happen next.