United House has been commended for its Flag process management system in the recent Quality in Construction awards.
The Flag systems, developed for United House by Propeller, is designed to integrate all of the different processes that are involved in refurbishment projects, enabling United House to manage a £200 million Decent Homes order book, including contracts to bring 50,000 homes up to standard by 2010.
Flag was originally developed in response to a £153 million PFI contract undertaken by United House for the London Borough of Islington, the largest and most complex street property refurbishment ever undertaken in the UK, improving the living conditions of over 20,000 Islington residents. Work on the scheme is scheduled to be completed in 2010.
Flag is the first process management system for social housing to be developed by a contractor. It tracks the progress of work property-to-property, automatically generating personalised letters to tenants, coordinating appointments and synchronising with the pre-agreed target programme. Flag then formulates the works process from start to finish for each property, generating a works order. A simple traffic-light system prioritises actions to ensure full compliance; work cannot start until the project literally gets the green light.
Paul Nicholls, director, United House, said, “Tenants like it because they get answers from whoever they are speaking to. They can also use FLAG to choose the bathroom or kitchen suite and interior colour schemes they want from a portfolio of options. All information is stored centrally and automatically fed into the project system.”
