tonysmiththathousingitguy @HousingITguy

Some thoughts on IT and UK SocialHousing from a unique perspective of over 27+ years working with over 140 RSL's, Councils and social landlord groups in the UK, Ireland & Australia. (c) No reproduction without prior/express permission Available for independent housing RSL implementation, procurement of HMS, Repairs, CRM, EDM, DLO, Financial, Scheduling systems, critical friend etc. In Scotland I work with the folks at Arneil Johnston Check us out on Soundcloud /housingitguy

Friday, 10 March 2023

The Littlest Rebel

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

I have often worked with clients on ‘customer journeys’ to examine and build sustainable processes and ICT solutions, that support all steps in the chain. Now we all encounter and know about silo-thinking, how mostly its not effective and it can blunt performance.

Its hard in many respects to shrug off silo thinking if staff are struggling with workload or being challenged to do more with less. I certainly understand that and am very aware of the effects of local authority cuts and other squeezes. I share that with my clients too, I get it to put it mildly.

Procedures at all time need to be carefully thought out and also importantly well communicated to staff, who understand GDPR and other implications as well as their effect on staff and end-customers, further downstream. What do I mean by that, you may ask?

Well, respect for data and its accuracy is crucial, as well as being governed by law. Poor recording of data, storing it in the wrong place, or in many places, creates issues later which are much more serious. One example is where an admin staff member may choose to drop some documents with personal information in some team network drives, rather than a corporate EDRMS. That saves 30 seconds per document and that specific team probably knows where to look to locate that information. However, this is false economy.

Where it falls apart somewhat is when much further down the line, another team is pursuing info around a complaint, disrepair claim (we have many complainants and chasers), audit query, FOI (Freedom of Information) or ‘right to be forgotten request’, this is where the downside can be found. This too is as difficult to small as well as bigger providers. Each of these requests can take days maybe weeks to resolve. If disrepair claims or challenges from the ombudsman result in cash payments to tenants, you can bet that many times that internally is wasted on chasing around to pull disparate information can be corralled together.

With a government and department of levelling up and communities mad keen to tell renters to ‘report your landlord direct to the ombudsman’, on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere, those queries and complaints are coming thick and fast. They will be increasing too. Lets hope we can see squeezed repair and other budgets, used to resolve issues in the most satisfactory manner possible, rather than using it to chase our tails struggling to find information.

Get processes right from the start, train staff to operate in a certain fashion and know why we do it that way and manage them well to use it, is the best foundation.

We need more good leaders, not rebels cutting corners.

If we at Acutance Consulting can help your organisation with data issues,

please just get in touch, for a friendly chat over some chocolate gingers & a coffee ☕😋.

Catch the blog monthly archive at
https://soundcloud.com/housingitguy/

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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.

The Fall - The Littlest Rebel.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Could we help you or your organisation? Our contact details are here , get in touch we will be pleased to chat about your problems and help with your organisation issues.

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Thursday, 23 February 2023

One of the Repair Girls

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

It was inspirational last week to read about how Golding Homes have helped diversify their repairs and maintenance team by achieving 23% female representation.

To put this in perspective, social housing staff comprise over 57% females. Overly male representation is common for me to see in teams for assets and maintenance, as it is in the ICT and systems team, I have written previously about this phenomena, which hasn't really improved in many areas.

In a previous life on the supplier dark side, I worked with two excellent female development managers, overseeing twenty-odd developers, as well as in other sectors having some brilliant lady bosses myself in ICT. Closing the door to about half of the labour force can only hold us back, its not just a diversity tick box approach we need.

The Chief Executive at Golding is Stephanie Goad. While females at the top are more often than not the norm these days, the same cannot be generally said in R&M. Why exactly is that then? Well, I would point to the common practice of promoting operatives ‘good on the tools, electricians, plumbers etc’, up to management. With less than 2% of those on the tools being women, you can see the source of the problem. A report was put together (and forwarded by Alison Inman) by Mears back in 2017, that examined why we see that pathetic 2%. Its fair to say that across the whole sector, 13% or so of staff in construction are estimated to be female. Many of these are in project management and design roles, as well as admin.

There are excellent business cases for levelling that up, as many Social Housing managers agree. CEO's clearly would need to drive this from the very top. Tenants who may feel vulnerable with tradesmen due to factors such as prior domestic abuse, or for religious reasons would certainly I'm sure welcome a gas service from a female operative. Why shouldn't our staff properly reflect the demographic of our tenants? Progress is slow, so what are the barriers to females getting on the tools and improving gender balance from bottom up?

A lesser-spotted female trades-person on the tools

Some job stereotyping is still occurring in families, secondary school, college and apprenticeship education, often pushing girls to more admin based than practical and technical vocations. Budget cuts do not help, nor does the current qualification system. Equal pay and equivalent access to promotion/career path is also important. Good support and mentoring is key, as is the development of strong role models for support.

While the traditional path to management clearly needs some attention, as mentioned in the article, Golding Homes have clearly worked to bring in managers from various sources, enriching the team with new skills. These include empathy, soft and customer service skills, which will be as essential as ‘wet trades’, in dealing with the current recent focus on mould and damp.

I have seen this approach myself work well and I have worked on some excellent projects with some housing, but out of R&M sector, female managers, who have absolutely transformed/turned around Asset Management and Repairs teams. Respect from staff they were managing, always was high and generally those managers were very detailed in their approach.

Another pathway I have seen in many projects, is the where female asset & R&M admin staff can be encouraged to train, take external courses and migrate into roles around survey, servicing, asbestos, compliance and data analysis. This can create a new positive dynamic within the team, if a genuine atmosphere of mentoring and support can be provided. These staff can then be positive role models to others joining the organisation.

For sure Golding Homes are a great example to the sector, credit deserved. But there is much to do and even if many of the principles and ideas I have covered here are faithfully executed, I still feel we are decades away from a more gender balanced workforce. With overall a better balance across the whole workforce, we stand a better chance of improving service, hence image and actually addressing more tenant repair issues, correctly first time.

If we at Acutance Consulting can help your organisation with data issues,

please just get in touch, for a friendly chat over some lemon drizzle Cake & a brew ☕😋.

Catch the blog monthly archive at
https://soundcloud.com/housingitguy/

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Otha - One of the Girls.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Wednesday, 8 February 2023

It’s a fixer-upper...

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

We are all aware of one or two in our neighborhoods I am sure, yes the ‘Fixer-Upper’. Generally a property (or anything else like an ICT system) bought on the cheap purchased with full knowledge that a lot of work, substantial additional time and cash investment would be needed.

That’s all very well with buyers going into that situation with eyes wide open, however what of new renters moving in to a let, then discovering its more a ‘Fixer-Upper’ than a property hitting the landlords ‘Letting standard’ ?

Classic issues in a Fixer-Upper are often damp, roofing and window issues, what might be more commonly referred to in social housing, as Capital Works. Small patches of damp are often caused by plumbing or roofing/draining issues. Typically tenants may report these issue instances via self-service or a call into an RSL contact service centre.

As we know, Westminster Housing & Communities dept, quite rightly are all over this issue at the moment, as can be seen by the initial report findings.

Top level observations were:

• Landlords relied more heavily on reactive approaches to identifying problems than proactively looking for evidence of damp and mould through surveys of their homes
• had less data or refreshed their data less frequently
• had weaker evidence about their assurance, oversight and understanding of the condition of homes

So how can landlords better use existing or newer Housing Management System solutions, to tackle the above directly?

Well, firstly an emphasis on how complaints and responsive repair requests are diagnosed and progressed. Where damp and mould issues come in as complaints, they should also be logged as a repair request. This is the envelope that can generally encompass pre-inspections, remedy work, post-inspection and follow-up surveys etc. Scripting (the likes of Keyfax, RepairFinder, ActiveHousing etc), can be enhanced around damp and mould, in order to capture additional information. This might include more precise locations in the property for example. IE not just ‘Rear Bedroom’, but in addition precise place(s), eg ‘ceiling next to back wall’, ‘To left of single glazed window’ etc.

Also, capturing extent and images if we can, is important. Tenants should be asked in plain language to determine what size the area is, if they are unable to measure. EG ‘a patch the size of a hand, full length of a wall’ etc.

Where pre-inspections are necessary, these can be specially prioritised and kept within the computer recorded Request. It is likely that an initial inspection will result in work on roof, guttering, plumbing, or other ‘Wet Trades’. I have worked with clients in some of the wettest parts of the UK (yes, wetter even than Manchester!) and generally I have experienced ‘Wet Trade’ operatives to be in short supply, particularly in colder/wetter months.

This can lead to work being deferred or perhaps parked until capital/planned programmes are due, later in the year. To safeguard the chance of the issue not being picked up by these later works, the Request should be kept open. Closing the request in this instance, has not solved the tenants issue, and artificially reports as a successful outcome at the RSL. This is a major danger, particularly if that programmed work on that block/scheme, never takes place or budget is reallocated.

Few asset stock condition surveys that I regularly see in use, actually ask questions specifically around damp & mold. These need to be incorporated if your asset management team have not already done so, in order to direct the surveyors right to it.

Where repeat Requests and customer contact occurs on damp/mould, these point to underlying resident issues not being solved. From the landlords viewpoint, this will no doubt cost more later in damage to the asset. From the tenant viewpoint, service is poor and their health could be placed in danger.

Data, having lots of it current and accurate around condition, is the key to closing out these issues properly and reporting coherently. You would expect by now, the sector was making good use of IOT to monitor properties and heating/ventilation efficiency. We still seem slow to put the Internet Of Things to much use unfortunately. This could be a source of great data. Perhaps a whole future blog there on pioneers doing significant rollouts in 2023.

Recent articles I have read cite ‘Tenant Life style’ as a sometime source of damp and mold issues. While lack of outdoor drying areas, heating/washing habits, occupier behaviours etc, can contribute to these issues, I doubt very much that religious practices and ablutions, rather than poor/expensive heating and noisy/insufficient ventilation, is to blame in many cases.

While we have improved central heating, insulated and double-glazed, we have reduced the amount of default ventilation in our homes too. Some additional communication can be really helpful as regards drying areas, opening windows etc, to tackle those aspects. Residents experiencing challenges in keeping homes sufficiently warm, may also benefit from advice via tenancy sustainment teams. For sure, we are all seeing increased fuel bills, with no early prospect of things normalizing soon. Noting that these types of discussions have taken place in our systems, will be helpful later in better targeting help, with potential reducing budgets.

Our systems can help landlords tackle damp and mould issues from a number of angles. Better the Ukhousing sector starts getting a grip on these issues, way before the regulator, ambulance chasers or God forbid, the coroner comes calling. As ever, remember even the best processes, technology and solutions, requires a good organisation culture too, driven best from the very top.

If we at Acutance Consulting can help your organisation with data issues,

please just get in touch, for a friendly chat over some lemon drizzle Cake & a brew ☕😋.

Catch the blog monthly archive at
https://soundcloud.com/housingitguy/

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Its a fixer upper – Yard Act.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Thursday, 26 January 2023

Friction

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

Just the other week, I was asked, “Why do you think our project to install a COTS (commercial off the shelf solution), went wrong, over-ran and needed a budget increase of nearly £2m to complete”?

Its a too common tale and an interesting question and also one that I had limited scope to comment on, as I was not aware of the project in question, nor was involved in my current remit with the organisation. For sure, software implementations go wrong, friction occurs and this post will try to cover some of the key gotchas, around COTS projects.

Firstly, is a COTS solution for you?

Maybe it isn’t and you should be building something from scratch, particularly if you are seeking a particularly unique solution to a unique problem. Most problems are not unique and if you have peer organisations, successfully using commercial solutions, that should really be the first avenue to investigate. Why re-invent the wheel if you can see a number of solutions to compare and contrast and find the one that gives a good fit.

Choosing a good COTs solution is a bit like finding your life partner (and who is 100% happy with theirs?). All other halves have some irritating features, but no-doubt if you are still together, a great majority of things work out between you pretty well. Don’t throw the idea of a COT solution out because others have had issues. It can sometimes be difficult to get to the bottom of issues as organisations and managers rarely are comfortable sharing their failures. In practice, much can always be learned looking closer into what went wrong, ready for the next up-coming projects.

Many projects fail pretty early on, with the initial specification of what’s needing to be achieved and what’s needed from the COTS solution. A too high level or no spec at all is not recommended and always is likely to lead to receiving an initial bargain supplier quote. If your needs are vague, so will be pricing.

On the other side of the fence, back in the day as a supplier, I have often looked at an initial requirement and honestly determined it as easily done for £200k. I was generally carefully to detail exactly, what was included, which would generally flush out multiple missed additional requirements. Not all supplier sales folk would or do. My experience of many years doing implementations taught me that sales need to go better, otherwise the poor implementation consultants ultimately pick up the gaps later. That £200k could quite easily increase by a factor of ten, depending what was missed.

Costs should always be assessed and compared over the full contracted project life, typically five, maybe ten or more years these days. It’s a level playing field then for all.

Factor in all database licences, Cloud instances (you know, Live, Train, Test etc), additional software (MDM managers and security solutions) or hardware (tablets, laptops, workstations etc), from the very start.

Contracts are important and far too many projects I have reviewed, started with a poorly constructed one, or something I can recognise as a suppliers original, with little or no clarifications / alterations. In the instance of one client I worked with, a 108 page supplier contract had just been signed / countersigned at the bottom, committing that organisation to a five year minimum cost of over £700k, even if no solution was ever implemented or goes live. I was told the ICT director had ‘just signed it’, as it looked quite large and complicated. It was not balanced in favour of a more even relationship between client & supplier, even though the proposed product was just freshly released.

Which brings me on to another key area. Are we contracting to established and proven product? Does the solution exist at all, or is it just a ‘wire frame’ or cosmetic prototype? Are there any other live users, utilising it in the manner we expect to? If not, expect high risk, of to be perhaps footing the bill later, to make the solution work or finish it for your needs.

Risk is the third factor in what I would call the ‘holy trinity’ of procurement, together with well specified requirements and accurate cost. If your organisation has a relaxed attitude to risk, IE cost could be three times or more expensive or take 3-5 times longer than expected, a more relaxed approach could be taken. If like most Local Authorities, Councils or squeezed Social Housing providers, there is a pretty fixed budget and its absolutely needed live in x months, due diligence needs to fierce. Contract penalties need to be writ’ large.

So lets imagine we have our preferred supplier, suitable product and tight contract. There is plenty that can go wrong over an 18 month project. Client or supplier could resource it badly, both need to get that right, with my preference finding ways to get the A-Team involved. Quality and experienced staff, support better outcomes, go-lives and future system/process transformation.

Extended implementations are more costly and delay realisation of expected benefits.

While all projects can be expected to encounter some change control, that strong spec mentioned earlier, helps control what comes up and what’s valid. Where good contract and specifications have been available, over the last decade I have probably saved clients getting on for £1m in total, in rejected change control. Much of it due to supplier disconnect between sale and implementation, rather than sharp practice.

One last thought, keep your project focused. While this is a challenging prospect over perhaps an 18-24 month project, try hard to stay fixated on achieving original project outcomes. Understand when projects are drifting and challenge suppliers and your own team quickly, to keep on track.

While this has been a bit of a whistle stop tour of this subject, I hope its helpful to organisations considering or embarking on a new COTS implementation project. Comments or questions welcome – feel free to get in touch!

If we at Acutance Consulting can help your organisation with data issues,

please just get in touch, for a friendly chat over a Jaffa Cake & a coffee ☕😋.

Catch the blog monthly archive at
https://soundcloud.com/housingitguy/

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Television – Friction.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here

Wednesday, 11 January 2023

Light Specific Data

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @HousingITguy or LinkedIn here https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

I remember many years ago reading VS Naipaul’s “A house for Mr Biswas”. It’s a recognised classic, a tale of a Hindu Indian with a small disability, trying to fit in the community of rural Trinidad and Tobago. I recommend it, a brilliant and insightful book, that was acclaimed world-wide.

Early in the novel, Mr Biswas sets out to acquire a home library to appear well-read and intelligent. To do so, he orders x feet of book. He doesn’t particularly care what the books are, but he builds a library for himself.

The character collects books like many organisations collect data.

I have met many people in organisations, who are more focussed at time on the quantity of data we have, rather than the quality of it. Often its very burdensome to look too deeply into our data. Its expensive and often irritating to have to fix it. No wonder many obsess about the abstract concept of big data, most of us have not actually cracked small data yet.

I have met many ICT and data professionals, who have tried to make improving data quality their aim. Personally I have been there myself, creating exception reports and generating automated prompts, in order to flag up issues to staff before they become much bigger data problems. They like me I think were all universally hated, and referred to at times, to be the data police! It’s a moniker I can live with, and deep down I know good quality data, leads to better decisions.

How often do you and your organisation question your data quality? Only on one occasion in my career, have I seen an organisation underline the importance of data to staff on a full day of presentations. Everyone should try it.

How often in particular, are staff involved in :-

Inaccurate data
Incomplete data. If data is incomplete, organisations may make decisions based on a false understanding of the situation.
Outdated data: If data is not kept up-to-date, organisations may make decisions based on out of date information. This can lead to missed opportunities or a failure to identify new trends
Lack of data standardization: Poor data quality can also be caused by a lack of data standardization, which makes it difficult to compare and combine data from different sources. This can lead to confusion and mistakes in decision making.
Inconsistency in data: Inconsistency in data can lead to difficultly in tracking progress and identifying areas for improvement, which can lead to poor decision making.

Lets think now about the last time you spotted a data anomaly.

I have discovered many when migrating data from one system to another. Often systems are patched historically and data left incorrect in-situ. Data migrations do tend to flush a lot of this out. One example I saw around this involved car-port assets that were thought deleted seven years back. We had to reinstate them as historic data referred and related to them. Watch out for this yourself.

Another lovely data story I remember was from a West Midlands socialhousing landlord. I cannot actually remember what I was on-site doing, but I was asked if I could do my client a favour. I try to be a helpful bloke, so yes, I would always try my best to help, even if it caused me to miss my lunch!

What they were looking to do is mailshot/SMS txt all their live tenants over the age of 65. Quite an easy query in most integrated housing systems, (if you can avoid any Mr Void’s in one particular one, I am not so rude to highlight – but you guys know who you are!). My SQL query was soon done and its results dropped into Excel. (Not a database itself, before you ask!).

Now many people would have surely stopped there, passed the list and maybe the query on and cracked on with my lunch BLT. Being me I just thought I would check the sensibility of what was being pulled out, based on Dates of Birth. It was then that I wondered if I had made a serious scientific discovery, or was just looking at some dodgy data. I discovered that over a hundred of their tenants were over 1,000 years old. Digging further, they all lived in a place called Tipton.

I had never been to Tipton at that point, and wondered if it might be one of those types of communities you read about in Japanese islands or Southern Greece, for extraordinary life expectancy. Since then I have visited Mad O'Rourke's Pie Factory, in Hurst Ln (on my birthday actually, a few years back and it was bostin, although thankfully not the 4lb Desperate Dan Cow pie), so I was in no doubt that life expectancy, could well be nearer the west Midlands average in Tipton town.

The sad truth was that the DOBs were habitually entered incorrectly in the RSLs old Tipton Office, and never challenged or corrected. So I had to cancel David Attenborough and the film crew, it was just sh*t data, that could be easily corrected by a temp.

Its not just old people with poor data that we need to concern ourselves with, the young-uns can be problematic too. At another big West Midlands RSL, I looked into a problem with residents being button-holed by DLO staff to provide satisfaction feedback, but it was often residents still of school age. A great story for the Wolverhampton based Express & Star, although on investigation a lot of resident data was being incorrectly recorded, including tenant ages (defaulting to 0, as DOB could be entered as today) and the wrong household member being flagged as the ‘main’ resident.

Once pinned down to a couple of housing staff requiring some training, plus a regular report to flag them to fix them all, the problem was no more. In this last case, the problem was causing the DLO issues, and had a source right back when the tenancy was set up. Be aware of this type of thing. Often one dept needs to ‘take one’, for the wider team, which isn’t always an easy sell.

Anyway, the thought I would like to leave you with, is that we all need to really doubt all our data, all the time. Take ownership of it and how it should be fixed. Then keep fixing it!

At some point, being aware of the above and putting this into practice, your data will take you and your tenants to a better future.

If we at Acutance Consulting can help your organisation with data issues,

please just get in touch, for a friendly chat over a brew & a macaroon ☕😋.

Catch the blog monthly archive at
https://soundcloud.com/housingitguy/

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Hawkwind - Light Specific Data.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here