Quadrant, the Post Office caterer, has won its first full facilities management contract and its most lucrative deal for four years.
The Post Office Training and Development Group has appointed Quadrant to take over the catering, accommodation, reception and cleaning services at the organisation's two residential training centres in Rugby and Milton Keynes. Previously the work was run by in-house teams at the sites.
"This contract is worth £4.5m a year and is the biggest win since I became managing director of Quadrant," John Burchell told Caterer.
"It has been a thorn in the side for a long time that these establishments were not run by Quadrant - I've wanted them badly for the past four years."
Mr Burchell said he now wanted the company to develop further down the facilities management route, which he regarded as a natural extension of employee feeding.
The company has bid on a number of occasions for contracts to run all services at several government department training colleges but it has never succeeded because it had no track record in this type of work.
"We will now be able to use the Post Office training colleges as showcases of what we can do and we will start bidding in earnest for that sort of work elsewhere," said Mr Burchell.