PRESCOT-BASED facilities manage-ment firm Vertex has won a £40m contract to provide call centre services to American energy provider NiSource.

Vertex, which has a global turn-over of £400m, will manage custom-er service enquiries, emergency service, and some billing for NiSource for the next seven years.

It employs 2,100 people at its six North West sites, including Prescot, Knowsley, Chester and Warrington, and a further 7,000 people globally.

It has managed part of Ni-Source’s call centre functions for three years as a sub-contractor to IBM but the new agreement estab-lishes a direct relationship between NiSource and Vertex until 2015.

John Hall, Vertex’s managing director of utilities, said: “Over the past three years, Vertex has de-veloped an in-depth understanding of NiSource service requirements. We are looking forward to building on that to deliver enhanced services to their customer base.”

NiSource, a Fortune 500 company, provides natural gas, electricity, and other products and services to nearly 4m customers.

It is the second major contract with an American energy company that Vertex has signed in 2008, after it finalised a 10-year deal with SouthStar Energy Services, in Atlanta, Georgia, in January.

Vertex has UK contracts with Marks & Spencer and Warrington- based United Utilities, its former parent company which sold Vertex to a consortium of US private equity firms for £217.5m in 2007.

Last month, it signed a 10-year customer management contract with the National Trust to manage and deliver end-to-end customer services for the Trust’s member-ship of 3.5m people. It has managed the Trust’s outsourced membership services since 2004, and has about 170 staff in Knowsley and Warring-ton fulfilling the contract.

alex.turner