When we talk about innovation in social housing, we always assume it means doing or creating something new to address something going forward, such as addressing the status quo to make the future better. What if we could innovate to address legacy issues, removing the need to create a date in the future where everything will be better with the new way of working? What if this could also be done without changing current processes?
The concept above is one of the biggest issues in asset management; the ability to track the performance of something over a period of time, including historical milestones, is one of the most important aspects of system journeys. The ‘installing and ignoring’ mentality leads to a reactive sector and a game of chance.
Social housing has over four million properties, with many more millions of assets inside them. The ‘blue sky’ thinking is to get everyone in social housing to use one product to capture everything about everything, but that’s never going to happen for any number of legal, business and individual personality reasons. Other options include the internet of things and, eventually, the internet of everything (IoE) but, as anyone who works in the sector will know, as soon as those sorts of technologies are introduced to tenants, the challenge of “big brother is watching me” arises and causes us increased workloads.
So, right now, how do we know where the issues are? Are we focusing on the high level, such as the number of properties with an in-date gas service or are we looking at the milestones; when was the boiler installed, when was it last serviced, how accurate up to now are the predicted milestones we created when we first installed the appliance? For electrical systems, is the installation still performing as it was designed to, and if not, you are already at risk whether you have an in-date document or not.
Innovative technology used alongside the best asset management systems on the market (for example, Orchard’s ProMaster) can give you access to more data than you ever thought possible. That data then intelligently mapped into one location or graph can provide benchmark statistics around compliance which are easier to plan towards than industry guidance written without the sector’s input.
Playing catch-up doesn’t have to happen, changing what you do now to get this doesn’t have to happen, truly innovative technology gives you amazing outputs at the touch of a button.
Ryan Dempsey is the CEO and founder of The Compliance Workbook.
