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Voids Management

For many Housing organisations there are an average of five properties a week that become vacant and are handed to the Repairs Team to inspect for any maintenance works required before they are re-let. Typically, the Repairs Team will visit each property and arrange for any repair works needed to bring them up to a ‘minimum lettable standard’.

This work will then be carried out by the In-House Team or one of the Housing providers 3rd party contractors. The time taken to get a property back to minimum lettable standard can vary, however the average time taken last year was 36 days. With the use of technology, housing departments can better manage and reduce end-to-end voids times.

This can be achieved in a variety of ways such as carrying out the capture of voids specifications via a mobile workforce management solution, allocate the work of operatives and subcontractors through a dynamic scheduling tool, and managing costs, invoices, and re-charges with a fully integrated, modern job management platform.

Learn more about our Mobile Workforce Management Solution

Organisations can also build transparent relationships between customers, contractors, and sub-contractors, resulting in better efficiencies and greater productivity

One of the main benefits is the ability to co-ordinate your workforce through intelligent scheduling meaning you are able to send the most appropriate person, in a nearby location, to the right job at the right time. In addition to assisting with planning, the use of technology also permits a great deal of flexibility: allowing supervisors to allocate work or enabling your workforce to create appointments and schedule work for themselves for the same day on their mobile device. Not only does this help reduce the mileage of your mobile workers (which equals fuel savings) but it’ll also help you to increase the number of jobs completed per day.

Voids management software helps your departments work together, from your workforce completing a survey, your call centre re-routing appropriate teams to immediately updating accounts. It is this integrated approach that offers you one view of all processes, providing you with a seamless way of reviewing data, which allows your voids to be fit for purpose sooner.

The current situation for housing associations carrying out voids management:

  • Struggling to meet ‘void-to-let’ targets, complex mix of ‘unknowns’ that arise from initial inspection to completion proving difficult to visualise & coordinate, resulting in delays
  • Limited visibility or control of work progression / outstanding job status, Difficult to maintain oversight of operational delivery / establish ‘management by exception’ principles
  • Material mgt – not well integrated, significant manual overhead to reconcile inventory requirements, use & replenishment across the operation, track & trace usage across resources, assets and key trends
  • Asset, repairs and inventory data is poor or incomplete, can’t control – let alone improve – what you can’t measure (poor Management Info)
  • Making changes to existing systems – in response to new contracts, new legislation, new policies – is slow & costly, often requiring support form external providers
  • Difficult to configure discrete workflows for diff job types and guarantee the different compliance requirements
  • Sub-contractor mgt – not integrated, significant manual overhead, inability to capture associated job completion data, manage variations, post-inspections & process invoicing.
Our integrated asset & job management solution enables Housing Associations to improve their repairs & maintenance service, to achieve their objectives of delivering safe, decent and energy efficient homes, underpinned by high levels of customer satisfaction. An integrated solution that includes asset management, job management, mobile (incl. LWP), scheduling and analytics capabilities, enabling our customers to deliver:

  • A more efficient, compliant service
  • A better, more convenient tenant experience
  • Increased job satisfaction for staff
  • Savings that demonstrate value for money

A single solution to manage assets, schedules, resources (incl. subcontractors), delivery processes, inventories and expenses.

The capabilities provided by Totalmobile for housing associations:

Cost
  • Integrated, lean processes align resources and allow management by exception – supported by real-time analytics for assurance & CI
  • Repetitive tasks, cyclical events and compliance validation can be automated, lowering admin overhead and improving response times
  • Increased DLO utilization and efficiency drives up productivity, reducing reliance on Sub-contractors
  • Advanced asset management strategies (e.g. predictive & reliability-centered maintenance) reduce failure & attendance rates, enhance budget planning
  • Enhanced inventory & material handling reduce costs, increase FTF rates
Risk
  • Ensure assets & jobs are compliant, with simple identification of exceptions
  • Monitor disrepair, respond faster to incidents and better plan for budget replacement programs
  • Deliver a better, more convenient tenant/customer experience with flexible appointment booking, proactive notifications and high FTF rates, to drive C-SAT
  • Free up costs for additional strategic initiatives
  • Simplify operational scaling for growth (organic / M&A)
Agility
  • Make faster and more informed business decisions
  • Rapidly adapt to new requirements & changes to business processes through no/low code configuration
  • Onboard new contracts, subcontractors, material suppliers, etc. in hours & days, not weeks & months
  • Identify opportunities and enable a culture of CI
Service Quality
  • Integrated systems & processes, with AI support
  • Exception-based management, freeing key resources to respond
  • Reliable, high-quality, consistent service – visible & verifiable
  • Better, more convenient tenant experience –high C-SAT levels
  • Reduced revisit/recall rates, and reduced asset failure rates

Business Outcomes:

  • 28% increase in repairs & maintenance productivity
  • 21% increase in turnover
  • 35% more jobs completed per day
  • Reduction in ‘Void-to-Let’ turnaround time
  • Integrated solution – reducing paperwork & admin overheads
  • SaaS solution – minimising hosting & management costs
  • Reduction in invoices in dispute