Switched on and mobile

By investing in a new integrated stores management and IT mobile working system, Bolsover District
Council is looking to reap the rewards of cost-savings combined with a more effective service delivery

The growth in dynamic IT systems for scheduling repairs and maintenance has proved a transformative experience, enabling social landlords to improve service delivery, save time and energy – and expense – while fostering a more satisfying relationship with tenants.

Bolsover District Council (BDC) has plugged into the possibilities of electronic management and communications to better look after its 5,300 or so properties. The council is working with a company called First Touch on the new system. Hand held PDAs are being issued to the 50 or so repairs operatives employed in Bolsover’s Housing Department, so that they can receive repair job details over the airwaves – and report back job status to head office in realtime, without ever having to physically attend the depot.

The heart of the system is the Optitime dynamic scheduling system, by Xmbrace, which manages reported repairs and allocates them to the most appropriate operative, based on geographic proximity to the job and the required trade. The new integrated management system is also interfaced to its stores provider, Travis Perkins. This ensures that the van can be kept adequately stocked at all time, so that there is less reason for trips back and forth to stock up.

Roll-out of the PDAs is being phased, with the repairs staff taking possession of the devices in mid-April, followed by the operatives engaged in planned works and voids around July. In September, it will be rolled out to the gas servicing and the electrical periodic inspection teams.

“The system notes and logs each repair request by postcode and the trade required and looks at the geographic location of each tradesman to allocate the nearest one to the job when it goes live,” said Councillor Keith Bowman, the council’s portfolio holder for housing.

Work is no longer allocated to operatives two or three weeks in advance, as it would under a paper based system, but is ‘fired off’ to each operative wirelessly when they report one job finished and therefore ready to receive the next. Currently, the DLO gets through 1,100 jobs a month on average plus about 40 voids where work is needed to meet the lettable standard.

Overall, the system is expected to reap the authority some significant savings in the execution of this workload, as well as make the service more efficient and responsive to tenants.

“The system will reduce the mileage covered between repair addresses and therefore reduce travel time while increasing our response time – so repairs will be carried out quicker for the customer,” Bowman added. “It’s driven by a desire to improve customer excellence and efficiencies within the
council.”

Among those efficiencies and savings, of course, will be reduced fuel consumption – both a cost and a carbon saving – while the operatives will have time to complete more jobs in the course of the working day, meaning better use of their time. The stock control system will also enable more jobs to be completed right first time – handy for the tenant since it means less hassle from the repairs process. All told, this greater responsiveness and right first time fixing should feedback in greater levels of satisfaction.

The organisation is also “empowering” its operatives to undertake additional repairs jobs they may encounter whilst visiting a property to fix the primary repair. This may be a job that was additionally reported by the tenant, but which had a different priority rating, or it may be one that the tenant hasn’t got round to reporting. Under the new set of conditions the council is introducing, they can simply call through and gain approval to carry out the work there and then.

The vehicle fleet is also set to be expanded so that operatives will have a van each, rather than sitting two or three to a vehicle.

“This aspect means a change in working practices which were previously agreed in the terms and conditions,” Bowman said. “The unions are heavily involved and were consulted, and the workforce has embraced the need to change and the need to deliver efficiencies.”

The other crucial stakeholders, of course, are the residents of the properties. Courtesy of RANT – Residents’ Advisory Network Team – which ensured that residents were consulted on the development of the project and even had a say in specifying its functionality.

“We have a project board overseeing things,” Bowman said.“Unusually, we rolled out the board to include the repairs management team, the union representatives, a councillor, and a member from RANT . This shows the level of inclusion and participation, not only from the design stage, but through
to key decision making.”

This board will not be relinquishing its role once the system goes live, but will continue to scrutinise the new service, producing regular business reviews, to assess its roll-out and delivery for a good six months afterwards. The council is expecting the new system to more than prove its worth.