ForViva has extended its 10-year usage of Orchard’s Asset Management software with its recent additional implementation of Orchard’s Options Appraisal to get a better view of its housing assets.
Orchard said that as a module within Orchard Asset Management, Options Appraisal is an active asset management tool, enabling a more strategic view of asset management and provides stock viability assessments.
ForViva can now make informed and transparent decisions regarding the sustainability of its housing stock, including future spend, redevelopment or disposal for single dwellings up to entire estates or areas.
David Lowe, asset manager, ForViva, said, “Having considered other products, we chose Options Appraisal because it’s the only solution on the market that is automated; the competitive products still use static loads into Excel spreadsheets and aren’t fluid in terms of completed schemes or packages of work, plus no other offers any capability for scenario modelling.”
Options Appraisal enables ForViva to bring in data direct from the survey module, with the survey data itself updated automatically once work on a location in a project is marked as complete. In addition, as work is completed on a project, the new information about ForViva’s stock is immediately available for NPV calculations.
Lowe said, “Before using Orchard Asset Management, our data was held in our housing system and in various spreadsheets which made dealing with compliance, decent homes calculations and asbestos time-consuming and cumbersome. As with the other modules in Orchard Asset Management, Options Appraisal has not only saved us time and effort but has also given us the ability to assess stock performance and analyse the reasons for any poor performance, all from the same master set of data.”
Options Appraisal has also provided support for financial stress testing and allows ForViva to take an intelligence-led approach to its stock investments, including helping it to decide if a project is worthwhile before sending anything out to tender.
John Buckland, head of asset management, Orchard, said, “We understand the importance of having a single version of the truth and our integrated asset management system ensures this across all modules, including Options Appraisals. A robust system is needed when analysing thousands of properties with multiple factors across many years, with different scenarios, and stress-testing assumptions for factors such as interest rates and inflation.”
Extending its initial use of Options Appraisal, ForViva now incorporates additional factors such as turnover, let-ability, crime and anti-social behaviour (ASB) into its appraisals, giving it a more holistic view of how its housing stock is performing and then using those ratings to fine-tune their property investments.
