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

Thursday, 19 October 2023

15 Minutes

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

From April 2024 in England its mandated by the new regulatory standards, for landlords to inspect their properties more often to confirm they meet statutory and decent standards. Assuming this is a minimum of three hours interaction annually, that’s pretty much 15 minutes each month.

I spotted this highlighted by one of my contacts on LinkedIn , Ian Wright who doing the calculation worked that out at 0.034% of a year. Is that enough time for any landlord to understand the condition of the property, or more saliently if the property is meeting the needs of the tenant?

Lets for the moment put aside the restrictions we have on budget and stock to be able to easily swap tenants into more suitable homes. I am sure readers agree that due to lack of socialhousing means that those opportunities are limited, to the distain of tenants with specific needs and others on lengthy waiting lists.

I have recent done some work to try to determine how much interaction a particular landlord had with its tenants. This involved looking at CRM, Repairs, ASB, complaint, arrears and other recorded interactions and using this data to interpret into a classic bell curve graph.

The 5% either side of that bell curve represent different types of problem. To the left, tenants with little engagement may be dissatisfied and not engaging with us, or undertaking potential habits that might mean that their landlord is the last person they would like to see. Indeed, tenants who never contact us, are as much an issue to be investigated as ones we hear from multiple times each week.

Its important too to respect tenant privacy. As a tenant myself renting an ex-RTB housing association property from a private leaseholder at a particular time in my life, I remember being awoken by my landlord gaining access to do repairs against my wishes and without prior notification. Respect is the watchword in my opinion.

Clearly we are in an age too where IOT and other tech is available to help landlords monitor damp and other issues more easily than ever before. Having wrote blogs about this being ‘just around the corner’ over several years, it seems to remain, ‘Just around the corner’. While a lot of this tech can potentially help residents, particularly with control of energy bills, hazards and other issues, it still looks to be at its ‘prototype’ stage (if at all).

If we all embraced some more of the tech, integrating good human interactions too. Most housing association staff I encounter are extremely positive toward tenants and recognise we all share the same struggles. I grew up in 1970s Council Housing on a satellite Manchester estate and it gave me the foundation to thrive. I must say that my mother had the opportunity to exercise right to buy, but refused. Whether its tech, people or a mix, that’s essential support is still there, so future communities continue to thrive too and there is affordable (lower case a, adjective not noun) housing is available for all.

Subscribe to our blog here on this link, to always catch the latest news on whats happening in the sector.

Acutance Consulting would be happy to help you review your automation,

please just get in touch, for a chat over Gingers & a brew ☕😋

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.

Kirsty McColl – Fifteen Minutes.
(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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Tuesday, 26 September 2023

Letters Sent

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

A truism about ICT systems is that we should try to configure them to do as much of the logical and mundane tasks, that they are really good at. Often that can involve (properly) configured workflow.

For example, checking nine or ten things every interaction we have with customers, so we serve them appropriately and tailor service best we can. One warning message can dissect the fact we need to know our customer is ‘hard of hearing and also generally visited in twos’.

Hopefully staff are generally better at the human empathy skills (we would hope) and would be better at spotting a stressed or ill customer and have skills ICT would not have to help them with those challenges.

Clever and well thought through automation is useful and valuable. However, its easily disrupted or knocked out of kilter.

New system or solution implemented with insufficient or limited testing?

Perhaps upgrades are applied to software and not coherently tested?

Possibly staff change and insufficient training is provided to enable new intakes to operate the system as needed to drive automation?

Maybe we don’t report and manage volumes, so its challenging to notice if we have a problem at all?

In other cases, managers assume ‘automation must be happening’ and either does not realise they are still responsible for managing the service and how it works, or monitoring it. Over the last ten years I have seen more and more confusion about who is managing what. Ownership is a lost art I guess. Grenfell was the ultimate recent example of how checks and balances never took place, management & oversight was absent and Seventy Two innocent residents paid with their lives.

While ICT automation in Social Housing is unlikely to cause serious fatalities, however in medicine for patients awaiting cancer or other serious diagnosis, absence of communications can be very serious. You may have heard last week that Nottingham University Hospitals Trust failed to send 400,000 letters. Read more here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66950204

Apparently, it started in 2008 and reasons cited spookily were ‘Lack of responsibility’.

While this is terrible, there are valuable lessons to learn from.
•   Test all aspects of new systems and never accept anything at face value. That’s your responsibility, not your suppliers
•   Monitor performance
•   Spot-check outputs on a regular basis, to confirm automation works as designed
•   Use incoming complaints as your service feedback loop. If we think 100% of communications are being automatically issued and complaints have increased by 325%, analyse where the original system failure is occurring

In this post I have concentrated on automation that has gone wrong. However, with the many systems I encounter and regularly work with, often the problem is that available system automation is not in use. Some of this can be easily worked out, others may need a help desk call. With some suppliers it might (feel to always) be £10k of implementation consultancy, whatever you are asking!

While expense might be involved, never lose sight of ROI. Maybe a £10k investment can be recouped in x months through staff savings. Or better still we don’t save staff at all, we just retrain them to add more value and have more fulfilling roles.

Don’t forget if you are struggling with automation, just get in touch and ask!

Subscribe to our blog here on this link, to always catch the latest news on whats happening in the sector.

Acutance Consulting would be happy to help you review your automation,

please just get in touch, for a chat over Hobnobs & a brew ☕😋

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

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Half Man Half Biscuit – Letters Sent.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

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

Tuesday, 5 September 2023

Falling From The Sky

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

As a regular Private Eye reader, the recent revelation that in the UK we have a hundred or more schools blighted by failing RAAC (Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete). It’s a lightweight material that was used mostly in flat roofing, but also in floors and walls, between the 1950s and 1990s. It is a cheaper alternative to standard concrete, is quicker to produce and easier to install. In hindsight it was a time when so many new and replacement buildings were required after a crippling world war and full implications and life cycle of this newish material.

While the Romans apparently had concrete in their buildings, they didn’t have RACC, as far as archaeologists seem to agree. Romans also didn’t seem to require substantial ‘planned maintenance’, as evidence such as Hadrian’s Wall and the Rome Colosseum attests.

1960s concrete corroding tie bar corrosion checks

Planned maintenance is often neglected and in my 25+ years in Social Housing continues to reinforce the view that we often do it badly in the sector. In theory (and practice) if we get planned/capital spend targeted right, much can be saved in reactive repairs. While we have many software solutions to help with that, we still love our spreadsheets and manual solutions don’t we?

Many a time I have seen half a dozen staff in a room earnestly lamenting a £80 estimated SOR responsive repair being varied to £350 and examining it in detail, while four blokes next door manage a £4.3m capital budget on spreadsheets no-one can understand. Honestly, we need to understand why the latter is the most vulnerable budget for fraud, not the former.

So, what do the main solutions out there provide, from bigger all encompassing integrated solutions, to more third party interfaced, brand new innovations or standalone options?

All provide the options of defining our required component structure, with options of applying lifecycles, costs, replacement options and other criteria as needed. One size definitely does not fit all, as all RSLs & RPs have special requirements, in addition to 85% of everything that is usually ‘vanilla’ in the sector. This could be as quirky as having some properties with thatched roofs (such as in Gloucestershire or the south west), or communal heating for example.

Once a component structure has been defined, this needs to drive and inform condition surveys, to collect accurate information on what’s present, remaining life, condition and other specific valuable insights. Beware survey companies that resist or refuse to structure their survey offerings to what you need. Surveys are expensive and to extract maximum value fit Social Housing needs closely and be provided in a format easy to bring into the target system or module.

Failure to get this stage right can be extremely time consuming later, costly and frustrating. I have been involved at the start of many clients engaging survey companies and this has been a valuable exercise for client team and surveyors. Most surveyors can be flexible, although keeping to a ‘vanilla’ format saves them money and time, so the argument can be that they have used this for council or HA x, so it should be ok for you. Probably verify with council or HA x what their actual experience was like. In one example I saw of a ‘vanilla’ survey, it could tell us how many hanging baskets the properties had, but not condition or existence of Kitchen, Bathroom or wiring.

If you are paying for it, ensure you are getting good value and exactly what is useful to you. Many stock condition surveys come in spreadsheets, one row per asset (property or block etc), often with hundreds of columns. Remember, Excel or Google spreadsheets are not databases, don’t get confused they are!

Once the data is in your system/module database (a proper one OBVs, not a spreadsheet), we have the means to start to drive practical planned maintenance budgets and programmes. Clearly after initial Life Cycle Costings are produced, other work might be necessary or carried out to determine fit to available budgets and drive practical and effective programmes.

Trellick Tower Cheltenham Estate in Kensal Green, London - built 1972

In the case of suspected or actual RAAC, it appears to be not thought to be common in 1960s-80’s social housing, although possibly condition surveys should incorporate checks in specific build archetypes. If it is suspected in your stock, a component or attribute can easily be added, to allow convenient reporting, monitoring and addressing of issues.

Spookily enough 17 or so years back I was involved in implementing an assets, planned maintenance and survey solution across the Isle Of Man education authority. Thankfully the BBC reported that the IOM government has stated that there is no indication that RAAC was used there - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-66729079

Efficient and complete planned maintenance is crucial for safe buildings and keeping residents, children and others safe. We ignore it at our peril, prevention will save lives and be less costly than a later cure.

If you think your organisation, whatever size you are (we work with organisations managing from 32 properties, right up to 150,000+ ) needs help, please reach out to us.

Subscribe to our blog here on this link, to always catch the latest news on whats happening in the sector.

Acutance Consulting would be happy to help you review Planned Maintenance system options,

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

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

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Shed Seven – Falling From The Sky.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

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

Sunday, 27 August 2023

Policeman Data Skank

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

I don’t know what crossed your mind a few weeks ago when you heard about the recent UK big data breaches. On the Monday was a loss of millions of names from the UK Electoral Roll. 40 million voters in fact from hackers - Full article here. I suppose that does make a difference for our government to not be trying to be selling it this time!

A few days later came the PSNI data breach, of every serving police officer in Northern Ireland. - Full article here.

The day after that came Norfolk and Suffolk police, fessing up over another data breach consisting of personal details of 1,230 victims, suspects and witnesses - Full article here

While the first one was apparently a successful hack attempt, (we are familiar with some of those in social housing), the second two look more like spectacular own-goals, that would have needed Mary Earps England’s ‘Queen of Stops’ to try to effectively prevent. These were both cases where the police authorities apparently responded to freedom of information (FOI) requests, for summary data. IE number of cases, totals of police staff and roles etc.

They say a little knowledge is dangerous and that would certainly be true if that data was extracted into Excel perhaps (a tool we all love a little too much), and a pivot table/formulas created for creating the summary totals. To be compliant with a FOI request they could have easily supplied a short PDF of the totals page. To share way too much data we could provide the much bigger spreadsheet and inadvertently and criminally overshare.

In the case of the PSNI data breach, it could not have been much worse a mistake.

I have worked a lot over in Northern and Southern Ireland over the last 25 years. When I first traveled there, they had barely dismantled the British army checkpoints outside Belfast international airport. I have 100% always had positive and uplifting experiences with all sides of the communities I have worked with and received care and generosity throughout. Belfast and other places have improved immensely. Offices and property blocks have plate glass on the outside again and hen parties cycle around city centres on big beer/gin bikes. Its one of my favourite corners of these isles.

One institution in society that still polarises there is the PSNI. Once called the RUC reflecting just one part of society, its new incarnation is still extremely suspicious to both communities, nearly 22 years on:

Loyalist community suspicion

Republican community suspicion

In terms of putting people at risk and drastic effect on safety, over twenty thousand ordinary people doing some very dangerous jobs have been put in even more danger. Perhaps all down to lax training of admin staff on GDPR, our responsibilities to it and how they are to use software tools handling our data.

It wouldn’t be the first time I have encountered organisations doing a well meaning GDPR induction, yet with no practical advice of how and where to store data and the importance of it being accurate, succinct, consistant and well controlled. Its probably the subject of another future post or two, but we do give staff tools such as Excel and barely train them on it (if at all). No wonder they try to use it like a database and have no idea what they might inadvertently share using it. With such lack of knowledge, staff should be banned from using the common off the shelf excuse, “I cant do that due to data protection!”.

So, could these last two types of gaffs happen easily in your organisations?

How well do you induct and keep all staff aware of GDPR?

How do you induct staff on how your systems and storage needs to be used consistently for good data hygiene?

How well do you control information access and controlled release, particularly of sensitive data?

If you have any doubts on the above, please take action right now, before your organisation makes some rooky mistakes and we can all watch its gory details examined on Newsnight and Sky News.

If you are struggling with getting your GDPR in order, or replacing spreadsheets with systems or databases, just get in touch with us.

Subscribe to our blog here on this link, to always catch the latest news on whats happening in the sector.

Acutance Consulting would be happy to help you review systems options,

please just get in touch, for a chat over a ginger nuts & a brew ☕😋

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

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Audioweb – Policeman Skank.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

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

Saturday, 5 August 2023

Add a zero

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

I’ve worked with some of the biggest socialhousing providers in the UK & Ireland, but also with some of the smallest. For the latter how is a provider with just 34 homes for a specialist tenant audience. There are suitable systems and solutions for both and everything in between. I have fitted to all types of budgets and needs.

As I have written in this blog previously, for the most part its not that much easier for smaller providers than the very large ones. I was chatting to one of my clients the other week about being on top of FRA’s (Fire Risk Assessments), gas servicing and legionella testing in his 200 properties. It was clearly complicated and challenging with just a few full time staff.

He had a great expression, “Just add some zeros on the number of homes and its just like the bigger providers”. A lovely way to put it and it reflects the needs of smaller providers these days, once you add up the returns, statistics, new White paper and legislative requirements, required of all social landlords.

I have helped even the smallest RP’s with managing asbestos, servicing, electrical safety, capital works and heating system maintenance. It truly doesn’t get easier, and there are many ways to crack a nut. A lot of these things can be recorded in even the simplest HMS solutions out there, sometimes having to be backed up by some spreadsheets. Well designed ones OBVs!

The best solution is to record as much of the data in your HMS and ensure for all assets (properties & blocks) there is evidence of either relevant work required/components present (or not) and extract to monitor in spreadsheets. That way there is no chance of accidently deleting a few filtered rows in spreadsheets and missing servicing a few years, until the issue is discovered (or a serious incident occurs).

Assets teams are recommended in my experience to embrace shared solutions, rather than find their own siloed alternatives. The data can then be of use to as much of the organisation as possible, particularly to improve overall data quality. Always keep your data clean!

If you are struggling with getting your asset data and compliance in order, just get in touch with us.

Subscribe to our blog here on this link, to always catch the latest news on whats happening in the sector.

Acutance Consulting would be happy to help you review systems options,

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

how well linked into the Assets team are they?

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

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The Power Station - Go to zero.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

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