You may recall, back in September 2016, IT consultancy BJSS were in the process of creating a £2 million digital delivery hub in the South West.
The multi-million pound development saw BJSS create a lot of IT jobs and offer its large-scale enterprise clients full end-to-end solutions. Along with project delivery centres in both Manchester and Leeds, the Bristol branch was BJSS’ first digital delivery hub with more focus on ‘mobile and UI/UX type services in addition to mainstream IT engineering’.
After announcing that BJSS will be moving all of their team into a new state-of-the-art office in Bristol, we caught up with Simon Cook, head of Bristol delivery at BJSS, about their new office, why it’s in Bristol and their plans for the future.
“Bristol is a melting pot of tech companies and there’s a great community of creative technologists and talent here”
TechSPARK: What is BJSS and what do you do?
Simon Cook: We’re an award-winning, delivery-focused IT Consultancy with over 20 years’ software delivery and IT advisory experience. We are renowned for our technical excellence, cost-effective delivery and our proven BJSS Enterprise Agile approach.
TS: What first brought BJSS to Bristol?
SC: The government organisation that is responsible for vehicle licencing and MOT certification is based in Bristol. They’re an important client of ours and we wanted to be close to them, so we set up a small office on Victoria Street.
This was a good move for us because Bristol is a melting pot of tech companies and there’s a great community of creative technologists and talent here. By tapping into it, we’ve been able to grow in a short space of time without compromising on the robust BJSS quality standards, or our quality engineering approach and our excellent track record. It’s been far better than we would ever could have hoped for when we first opened that small two-person office back in 2014.
TS: Why the new office?
SC: We now have around 80 BJSS people based in Bristol. Until we opened our new Digital Delivery Hub, we were operating out of four offices in two separate buildings – it was crazy!
Our Digital Delivery Hub means that we have a flexible environment that is adaptable to the way we want to work. It is a creative, welcoming space with plenty of facilities that encourage team collaboration and working. It has flexible seating, allowing for teams to be quickly sprung up, plenty of whiteboard space for people to jot down their ideas, screens where they can showcase their work, and surfaces for post-it notes so that our people can brainstorm in groups.
TS: What successes has the BJSS had in the Bristol office?
SC: The contribution of our Bristol team is a major part of BJSS’ success. We have successfully delivered mission-critical systems for government clients, airlines, healthcare providers and retailers. We are heavily supporting a large delivery on behalf of an important client in Glasgow, and we’re also involved in the rollout of a new aviation system that will be used by airlines across Europe.
“We’re financing scholarships for children from low income families in Bristol”
BJSS recently announced a UK-wide community investment partnership with Turinglab, an organisation which teaches fundamental coding skills to children aged between 11 and 16. We’re financing scholarships for children from low income families in Bristol to participate in the Turinglab programme. Our team in Bristol has also been heavily involved in helping Turinglab to engineer its learning platform which will be used by schools across the UK to teach coding.
TS: How are you finding being part of the Bristol and Bath tech cluster?
SC: A lot of our staff have been heavily involved in the various tech groups for some time. One of the great features of our new Digital Delivery Hub is that we have an amazing auditorium space, so soon you’ll see BJSS hosting some of these tech groups.
In many ways, Bristol and Bath is undervalued as a tech hub, and in my view, there’s a sense that outside of the region people don’t realise exactly how strong our community is. We have a real spirit of independence here, so as technologists we strongly innovative and create. As a community, we need to encourage local businesses to engage with us more.
TS: How can people get involved with BJSS?
SC: BJSS has an award-winning Graduate Programme that’s backed up by our internal training facility, the BJSS Academy. This year we extended it to Bristol, and we’ve already welcomed the first group of graduates from local universities to our team.
We’re going to grow the BJSS Graduate Programme even further in Bristol next year, so students of Maths or Computer Science are welcome to get their applications in by visiting bjss.com/grad.
There is some great talent here in Bristol, and we’re keen to attract passionate technologists. We’ll be hosting several meet ups and events over the coming months, and we plan on showcasing some of our expertise in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Cloud, and Natural Language Processing. This will be a great way for the Bristol and Bath tech space to interact with us and hopefully we’ll learn things from our neighbours too.
TS: What’s next for BJSS?
SC: The success we’ve experienced in Bristol is being used as a template for new BJSS territories. BJSS has recently expanded to other cities in the UK, including Nottingham and Glasgow, and we’re replicating the same approach we took to building our Bristol operation to these new cities.
There is tremendous potential in Bristol. It is about to become a strategic tech hub for the UK and BJSS is committed to the Bristol operation. We want to create an environment that attracts the region’s best talent. Our new Digital Delivery Hub is an important part of this, as is the calibre of the projects and technologies that our people are exposed to. Our environment, collaboration, learning and development are the key factors that will define BJSS in Bristol.
Thanks to Simon for chatting to us. You can find out more about BJSS on the BJSS website or by following them on Twitter here: @bjssltd
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