National Badminton Centre: Flexible Electrical Equipment Testing for a Multi-Use Venue

The National Badminton Centre (NBC) in Milton Keynes is a state-of-the-art venue, serving as the training ground for the England Badminton team. Beyond its role in professional sports, the Centre also functions as a gym, leisure centre, hotel, and museum, open to the public. With such diverse facilities, ensuring the electrical equipment is safe and compliant is essential to maintaining smooth operations.

Since becoming a regular partner in 2013, Hawkesworth has been providing comprehensive annual PAT testing to ensure the Centre’s electrical equipment remains safe for both staff and visitors.

The Challenge

The NBC’s long opening hours (from 06:30 am to 11 pm) pose a significant challenge for any maintenance work. To avoid disrupting both staff and customers, all essential maintenance and electrical testing must be done outside operating hours.

Additionally, the nature of leisure centres means there’s a constant need for flexibility. Class schedules and special events, such as tournaments or training sessions, often require sudden changes to maintenance schedules. For example, when the Centre hosted a badminton tournament, our engineers had to adapt and test specific rooms around match timings to minimise disruption.

Our Solution

Hawkesworth offers a flexible PAT testing solution designed to meet the unique needs of the National Badminton Centre:

• Out-of-Hours Testing: We provide early morning, evening, and weekend testing to ensure minimal disruption to NBC’s operations.
• Flexible Scheduling: If the NBC needs to reschedule testing due to last-minute changes in their programme, they can simply contact their dedicated account manager at Hawkesworth. We will quickly rearrange the testing to fit their needs, ensuring a smooth experience.
• Comprehensive Equipment Checks: Our engineers test a wide variety of equipment, from gym machines and tills to vending machines and extension leads, ensuring the entire facility remains compliant and safe.

“One of the reasons why we like using Hawkesworth for our testing is because they can work around our requirements. We recently had to rearrange testing to take place on a different day, Hawkesworth sorted this out for us quickly and provided clear communication every step of the way.”

– Operations Manager, NBC