Lightening the load for the affordable housing sector

As housing associations and local authorities face increasing pressure to work more efficiently, leading builders’ merchant Travis Perkins is doing its bit to help them ease the burden through its Managed Services division

Travis Perkins Managed Services manages repairs and maintenance stores for local authority and housing association DLOs as well as maintenance contractors helping them to cut down on the substantial costs and inefficiencies of purchasing, stocking and administering building materials for their trades people.

It has over 80 clients and supplies materials to an estimated one million properties including 70,000 affordable homes in Birmingham.

As James Clack, managed services director explains: “Travis Perkins is constantly working to improve its service to all of its affordable housing customers and with over 35 standalone managed services stores there is much scope for sharing best practice and a real focus on adding value and procuring with the affordable housing sector in mind.”

Travis Perkins Managed Services offers a number of different options which can be tailored to the individual needs of each customer. It can:

• Run a material store from the client’s existing premises as it does for Bristol City Council’s Landlord Services, where it has TUPEd over a number of the organisation’s employees to work in the store under a Travis Perkins Manager
• Set up a stand-alone purpose-built unit offsite as it has done for Wolverhampton Homes
• Run a material store for a client within an existing Travis Perkins branch such as Cheltenham Borough Homes – this is only possible where there is space to put a trade counter, store stock and provide parking for the organisation, without disrupting the normal business of the branch.

The aim of running the stores on behalf of clients is to eliminate the “headache” of managing a materials store while delivering tangible savings and enabling the operatives to work more efficiently saving time and improving the quality of service.

“As a merchant our expertise is procuring building materials, stocking building materials, delivering and administering them, so the clients have got benefits across all four of those areas,” says Clack. “From a procurement point of view it is about consolidating the amount of suppliers that they use, standardising materials and getting cost control on the products that matter.

“Where we have only got one site where we manage all of the materials we can really control what goes in. Where we have a standalone site for our clients we are trading at 98 per cent accuracy on what we stock compared with the product catalogue, so that gives them real certainty that their operatives won’t have any wasted journeys and that they have got the right materials in the back of their van to do more jobs. The whole driver is so that their operatives do more jobs right first time from the back of their vans.

“Furthermore, many of TPMS clients have found that with a combined IT and mobile working solution, call centre, scheduling software and stores strategy that they deliver more productivity through their operatives, spend less on sub contractors and use less materials per job. These efficiencies translate into real cashable savings once looked at as part of the whole cost of service.

“If we could transfer what some of our clients have done to the wider public sector there could be massive savings and efficiencies. It is out there as best practice and there are massive efficiency savings to be had.

“At the moment it is so fragmented and everyone is doing different things but if we could get all those providers to agree on certain things such as where the waste is and adopt a consistent approach to tackling specifications and performance measurement there would be much scope.”

Travis Perkins Managed Services is also able to provide services for national clients by setting up consistent arrangements across a network of its branches. For example, the company is sole supplier to leading housing provider Sanctuary Group and is setting up dedicated service points in line with the Group’s national roll out plans for its Internal Maintenance Service.

As Clack explains: “We have worked with them from the start and are building up as we go, mobilising where they are setting up their Internal Maintenance Service. It might be for five operatives, seven operatives or 30 operatives in various parts of the country and we will kit their vans out, give them van stocks and all the management information in order to manage their business.

“This provides a consistent approach which is continually reviewed to ensure the correct products are held at all times, enabling van stocks to be minimised and providing an enhanced level of service at the designated branches.

“We are also working on a mobile test pilot with their software provider where we give them electronic data, so they can get real-time cost control.”

Sanctuary currently purchases multiple different lines of the same product from Travis Perkins but through using the multi-branch approach the company can rationalise the number down to a few. “For example, we can monitor per operative on a daily basis the amount of smoke alarms that they buy and there is that control over price and quality which you can’t do if you are using multiple suppliers and multiple sources,” says Clack.

Travis Perkins’ expertise doesn’t just lie in managing materials it is also able to offer its clients advice on the different materials and products available and as technology moves forward, the company prides itself on keeping abreast of the latest developments.

In a bid to help its clients fulfill their environmental obligations Travis Perkins Managed Services offers support in the areas of sustainability and waste management from advice and consultation to the purchase of environmentally friendly materials in-line with Government regulations.

But Clack is concerned that there is somewhat of a fragmented approach within the sector “Every single housing provider that we talk to has a different approach,” he says.

Travis Perkins Managed Services is hoping to take the lead on the Government’s Green Deal and the company is keen to work with its clients to progress the agenda.