As 2019 draws to a close and with the holidays almost upon us, it’s the perfect time to reflect on another fantastic year here at 3Squared. In partnership with our clients, collaborators, training partners, staff and 3Squared friends we have achieved so much.
It’s been an incredibly successful year for the RailSmart suite. We have focussed on improving the products for our users by introducing exciting new features, with more on the horizon for 2020. We have welcomed more clients and users to the RailSmart platform and existing clients are continually choosing RailSmart as their first choice when it comes to acquiring operational software.
As a company we are growing at a fantastic rate. We’ve welcomed many more talented employees to 3Squared across all departments and we are actively recruiting as we move into the New Year. In early 2020 we will make the move to our new office premises, which will give us yet more room to grow.
This year we have concentrated on strengthening relationships and increasing collaboration with both clients and third-party organisations within the rail industry. This will be a key focus for the year ahead as we introduce RailSmart forums and user groups.
But we have achieved so much more, including:
- Awards: We were honoured to be recognised with our client’s at the Digital Technology Excellence award at the RBAs, were one of the first members of the Rail Innovation Group to be awarded their Recognised Innovation Scheme, for the second year in a row we were recognised in the Top Tech Yorkshire top 20 and were highly commended at the Railway Industry Innovation Awards and both Tim and James were awarded with their very own trophies at the 3Squared staff Christmas Party.
- Staff development: one of newest recruits, apprentice Leon Martin was interviewed in Rail Professional magazine, whilst our QA Gareth Squires graduated from Sheffield Hallam School of Computing. We saw a record uptake on employee’s individual staff training budgets and continue to encourage all staff at all levels to pursue as much training and development as possible. Added to that we became one of the first companies to be granted “Preferred Employer” status by Hallam Uni.
- Conferences: we have been all over the UK attending, exhibiting and speaking at conferences and events including RIA’s innovation conference, Peloton’s Technology in Rail, Denton’s digitalisation rail series, the NP11 Convention, TfN’s inaugural conference, RIA’s AGM, the NRM Director’s Dinner, LNER’s Legends Awards, and more.
- Trade shows: as well as visiting Railtex and Rail Live we exhibited at our first international show at AusRail+ on the Dept for International Trade’s UK Pavilion. This was our first foray into the international trade fair scene; needless to say it will not be our last (see you at InnoTrans if not before!).
- Research and Innovation: we remain committed to R&D/I, attending a range of UKRRIN, RSSB, Sheffield Digital, Innovate UK and KTN events across the country.
- Accreditations: we successfully passed our ISO 9001 and 27001 audits, and our testing and quality team passed the International Software Testing Qualifications Board approval, and successfully implemented open sourced peak frameworks.
- Community and outreach: we are proud of our work and our team, but we are also immensely proud of the role we play in our overlapping communities. Locally we continue to support charities including the Archer Project and Sheffield Laces, whose team tees we sponsored. We continue to support MacMillan, Save the Children, Railway Children and Shelter, directly and indirectly via our memberships. Crucially though we remain dedicated to supporting local educational communities through our STEM, tech and careers fair engagement work; one of the highlights was teaming our work with @SHFWiT to assist an inspiring Ada Lovelace inspired event.
- 3Squared AGM: a resounding success. Yet again we achieved fantastic staff feedback, enjoyed impressively low attrition rates and across the board staff agreed they are proud to work for 3Squared. We really are #OneTeam .
And whilst Christmas is upon us, we will ensure that our dedicated support team will continue to be on hand each working day and can be contacted via the usual means.
From all of the 3Squared team, we’d like to take this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
See you in 2020!