Customer Service Plan

CSP Common Sections - version 01

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18.01. Planned Engineering Works (PEWs)

Openreach aims to minimise the impact of planned engineering work (PEW) by providing a managed process that governs and communicates advanced notification of Planned Engineering Works affecting or potentially affecting the operational capabilities of Access Locate and Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) the network to Communication Providers (CPs) with a point of presence in a BT exchange.

Planned Engineering Works are broken down into 3 categories;

• STANDARD – planned work to improve or rearrange networks not restoring customers service
• EMERGENCY – work necessary to restore service to a customer. This could be to  individual circuits or control equipment
• ROUTINE – regular activity such as testing of lines, equipment or software upgrades

Where a PEW is planned that may result in a disruption to your service, Openreach will endeavour to give 14 days prior notice. This is to allow you time to limit any impact on your own operations and to provide time for you to advise your End Users.

On occasions we do have to perform emergency work and in such cases Openreach will endeavour to give as much prior notice as possible prior to the start of the PEW. Openreach will not provide any notifications of routine maintenance work.

Where a service outage is short (minutes) and affects a small number of end users, the work will normally be completed during the normal working day. Where the service outage is long (hours) or affects a large number of end users, the work will normally be scheduled out of hours (between midnight and 07.30).

The PEW notification will provide CPs with the following details:

• The PEW case number
• The planned work type, i.e. standard or emergency
• The location
• The start date and time
• The end date and time 
• The products affected
• A brief description of the work to be completed

Where the planned dates and time of a PEW window is not at a convenient time CPs should raise the concern via the objections section provided within the PEW notice document. Openreach will consider, without prejudice, exception requests to carry out work on a different day or at a different time.  No guarantee that the request will be met can be given and customers will be informed of our decision.

18.02. Openreach PEW duty contact details: 

All planned work enquiries, objections and escalations should be made by contacting the SOTAP PEW duty.

18.03. Reverse PEW Notifications.  

CPs carrying out essential maintenance or upgrade work on their equipment located within a BT exchange should submit via email a PEW notification to the Openreach Planned Works duty. Onward notification to other BT group agencies and alarm surveillance teams will be provided by the Openreach PEW duty.

18.04. Major incidents

If a major incident is affecting a large number of orders/users then the CP should also contact their Service Manager to ensure the situation is monitored and resolved in a timely manner.

In such circumstances Openreach will attempt to re-balance resources to ensure that the impact of the incident is minimized and that customer orders are processed.