White Paper Lines

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

As anyone in the Social Housing sector interested in asset management or compliance will tell you, the Grenfell Enquiry has provided essential insights, this last year. 

Coupled with the social housing white paper strapline of ‘Keeping residents in social housing safe, listened to, living in good quality homes, and having access to redress when things go wrong’, there are more pressure on Asset Management Teams, than ever before.

In fairness, a lot of asset management teams have been on top of this for some years, albeit with fragmented solutions and system tools available. Spreadsheets or ‘best of breed’ applications were the traditional go-to places to store data. Loose or (frankly in some cases) pitiful integration, often helped make some asset teams quite siloed and detached from the rest of the housing operations.

Some of the better asset management solutions are now getting somewhat long in the tooth, or needing substantial investment to remove Silverlight too, which is unsupported from this year by Microsoft. Much better integration with where the rest of the housing solutions sit, plus a window into self-service, is necessary to engage openly with residents, so they know their RSL/RP has procedures in place and they have evidence they are being followed to keep them safe in their homes. 

Grenfell has put an essential spotlight on FRA’s (Fire Risk Assessments) and resident trust in other compliance. Another area where a separate Asbestos, Fire Risk or Gas Servicing solution could represent a cats cradle of more data silos, some in a browser, others only accessible in the office. Increasingly, to better service and support residents, more or all of this asset data needs to be in a single repository. Where a wide selection of Housing Management system modules are in use with a decent EDRMS, if the quality of asset/compliance offerings is good, it makes sense to consolidate there. Potentially it can be cheaper too, when annual licence & support costs are considered.

In many sites, I think its management inertia that has traditionally put the brakes on considering sorting this out. One site I do work for, every other year, we do an asset reconciliation. There is one figure there from the Fixed Assets ledger, one from HMS, one from the DLO system, one from Assets and one from a compliance team. All differ and the one we go with every time is a managers Excel spreadsheet. On concluding the gathering of the figure each time, I remind them that all of this could be integrated and consolidated in a project of 3-9 months, providing additional efficiencies. Without talking out of turn, I would be adding more value as Critical Friend helping them get it done, than counting the disparate parts every 24 months. As the above demonstrates, many organisations keep old survey data, which is little or no value.

What might be referred to as ‘The Golden Thread’ is often missing from many organisations and their asset strategies. In the tragic event of a serious incident occurring in a block or other asset, how long will it take to bring evidence together, of previous good management? Data commonly can be so dispersed/siloed, it takes days or weeks to determine chronologies or where safety and compliance was at in that location. If it takes longer than a couple of hours, I would say your systems are not adequately supporting this aspect.

In the last few months I have done a lot of work with some Northgate HMS sites, who now have the opportunity to close the loop and bring all the separate elements into a single browser presented and cloud ready solution. Following on from Hackitt, more organisations are discovering the buck stops at them. Even where good practice is in place, there is seldom the conduit in disparate solutions and data stores, to share with residents that accountability and responsibility that is being exercised.

The joined up approach that can be implemented within Northgate Housing, creates many new efficiencies. We have all encountered £2,700 being spent on preparing an essential void and within eighteen months, the assets team rip it out as part of their pre-planned programme and replace it again.

Using standard facilities in the main platform, all the good stuff around customer communications can be coordinated. There’s nothing worse than the asset management solution being a week behind the HMS data, a nightmare for Housing GDPR, but also opportunities for putting contractors and staff in danger. A visit in twos warning should not take up to a week, to be utilised properly within the asset management team. Scheduling and mobile all come into this picture too.

 Visualised risks delivered by dashboard

Being properly plugged into the main HMS, also means that a 360 degrees CRM view, can see asset management activity too. So often the asset silo is a blind spot, which causes frustration for all. Residents frequently chasing queries twice or more and generally too many hand-offs and hand-overs. Done properly, sharing necessary asset and compliance data and certificates in self-service, is a matter of 30 minutes of less than taxing configuration. Its like providing ‘the golden thread’ as a bi-product.

 Fire Risk and follow up management

Being able to connect all your compliance contractors, into a flexible integration platform is another advantage, that cuts out so much of the admin usually required. Consuming data, not PDF’s being rekeyed, is the way forward. One other aspect of integration is plugging into IOT and home automation to protect our assets. Its great to see Northgate customers, such as Wolverhampton Homes prove how problems such as damp can be handled, as well as helping residents better manage energy bills and usage, potentially tackling fuel poverty too.

Internet Of Things (IOT) monitoring dashboard

Keeping all this data in sync and stored in the same database, enables better cross module analysis, such as viability. Say goodbye to importing data once a year to process viability, once set up fill your boots three times a day if you feel like it.

Water Risk management dashboard

The point I am making here is that consolidating your data makes life easier, with decent visualisation tools, in addition to making bankable savings. At a time when quite a few asset management solutions are being rewritten, look again at your housing management system. There may be a second option there, like with my examples here with Northgate, that will take you to a better place.

All power to Northgate taking advantage of all the NEC investment from Japan, now rebranding as ‘NEC Software Solutions’, bringing a clear integrated, ready to go, Assets alternative offering. Others would do well to consider a similar approach. 

Read more about 'Smart, Safe and Sustainable Social Housing Solutions' on the NPS site at https://northgateps.com/software-solutions/housing-management-solution/

Related Post: UAT - Take it serious and take control of it

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.

White Lines - Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel.
(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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Best In The (Housing) World

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/

While doing some work at one of my customers the other day, during a spot of downtime I had a look at the Housing Technology IT Supplier Review 2013. I don’t know if you caught this, if you are in Housing IT I am sure George Grant emailed you to let you know it had been completed.

Two results that made me smile were the areas where my old shop MIS-AMS came top of the pile; CRM and Asset Management. In some ways I was not surprised as that's two modules and application areas I know like the back of my hand. Also I had a lot of involvement in the design, implementation and customer facing aspects of getting those two modules right. They are pretty good to be sure (as I recall two of the Irish customers telling us), but seriously are they that much better than specialist offerings?

MIS-AMS ActiveH comes out way better than Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Surely is that not cream of the crop, supported by one of the world’s leading desktop software authors? MS Dynamics CRM did score highly on value for money, but then surely it should be, due to volume discounts and the like. So did the respondents skew the results? Strangely I had this conversation with an old colleague at another housing management systems supplier later in the week. I didn’t think so.

The differences boil down in my opinion to that old chestnut integration and look and feel. Adding Dynamics CRM or maybe Civica’s Contact Manager to a vertical market set of modules, such as a HMS provides training and significant integration issues. Out of the box costs are quite low, plumbing it all together is where resource, frustration and compromises slip in. So I am not surprised that bespoke CRM integrations score currently below out of the box CRM with all its links with Rents, Repairs, ASB, Web Portal, Planned Maintenance, Service Charges, Care, Development and Financial modules. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has come a long way from its original ‘bag of integration tools’ approach of a few years ago, but for most I don’t think it’s quite there yet.

Asset management is another mystery area. How on earth can a generic asset management module from the smallest player in this sector score higher than a specialist module such as Keystone, built by a team of ex-surveyors around housing needs? If I were Keystone I would be a bit worried. If I were Promaster or PIMSS I would be calling a working party to ask why on earth that might be.

If you are an ICT manager reading this or an Asset Manager, you can probably guess why the responses looked like they did. What are your day to day difficulties with your modules in place? It’s probably lack of or inconsistent integration, maybe a silo style approach which does not bring the main organisation into the orbit of asset management. Visibility counts for a lot when your housing officers are on the scheme and cannot answer basic asset orientated queries. Off-shore islands of data held in a separate asset management system (some even in a foreign database that has difficulty talking to your main ones) are not conducive to efficiency.

Opportunities to integrate well with voids, planned works, response repairs both ways are laborious, unreliable and often just abandoned for just that reason. I would guess from experience that Keystone is the best integrated of the respondents, hence it’s up there near the top. The Capita (old IBS) module deserves to be up there too. Obviously with Capita or MIS-AMS ActiveH, integration consists of setting the right parameters and code tables, not calling in the plumbers!

No-one should take any of the above as an endorsement (...other HMS & bolt on modules are available, all trademarks acknowledged etc..). The choice is always down to organisation needs. Just because it works in one RSL does not guarantee it will work in yours.

If you have a badly performing Assets or CRM module, get in touch, you know where to find me!


You can link with me on LinkedIn here - uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/ It would be great to connect !

Dr Feelgood - Best In The World.


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

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, please get in touch and let me know!

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Aint No Room

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

I have come across BIM / Building Information Modelling in many recent projects. Mostly in London based providers who are developing, however these are also innovations that can be leveraged in more historic and traditional situations and environments, 3D design and visualisation. Its clear to me that standards are being defined. The Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie) non-proprietary data format, looks like the early leader. Hopefully this is the VHS survivor, not the innovative Betamax format, back in 1990’s we all wished had won!

Providers, consultants and professionals I have worked with in Development, are all excited at the way standard formats like COBie, can smooth collaboration throughout the build. Post handover, contractors and Socialhousing staff can also use this data to take better informed decisions going forward.

In terms of the direction of the individual UK social housing regulators, providers having better information on the location of all fitted features, with ability to share more info with residents and manage our assets better is where we are going.

BIM is good and its clearly going to be a strand of how we will better manage assets in the future, hopefully recording and identifying components mapped to three axis and easily represented visually. The potential is there to improve the performance of our assets and how they use (or lose) energy well. Successful mapping of data points, hopefully in the thousands not hundreds in our buildings can provide a vast amount of information, which can be manipulated and overlaid with other data, perhaps collated via IOT sensors.

For all the excitement of virtual modelling and having all this information to hand, its interesting how many building organisations, still have limited Asset Management solution capability, or it is siloed and looked after by two men and a dog, who fiercely gatekeep access to it. Worse of all there are still too many organisations stuck with data in Keystone, hampered by Silverlight vulnerabilities, now further isolated from the main network by ICT, for security reasons. Asset data is better integrated into wider solutions, such as CRM, Repairs, Compliance, Voids and for general use of the housing team. While BIM might be aware of an M&E installation for ventilation, does the servicing team realise that the filters should be checked & cleaned annually to keep the kit working well?

So, if considering getting started with BIM, ensure you consider it as part of your wider Asset Management data regime. Thinking about it as a whole, the #Socialhousing sector will potentially be in a better position to improve the lives of our tenants, shared/leaseholders and satisfy those evolving regulator demands, from whatever corner of the UK, we need to conform to.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ *** Join the discussion with Claire & Aiden *** _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

Are you getting best use of your Asset Management information?

Get in touch , for a chat soon over a cuppa and a biscuit or two ☕😋

       Related Post: Does your organisation feed your development data into asset management ?

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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 Vines – Ain’t No Room.
(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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Keystone Cold Crazy

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

Is it so great when stuff just creeps up on you?

You know like your need to renew your driving licence or passport, when you have known about needing to do it, for ten whole years. Many of us may have been (nearly) caught out by that one. I was earlier this year, when I realised I had less than 6 months to go on my passport, before a trip to an EU country. I did managed to sort it in time however, without the deadline tripping me up.

One known about more than a decade ago deadline seems to have just tripped up many in SocialHousing. That is the popular housing applications out there, that utilised the early centuries big Microsoft trailblazing & expensive technology, Silverlight. Its late to the table response to Adobe Flash Runtime, launched 2007 and already had an end date planned by 2012.

I first blogged about its demise about 11 years ago -  , not that many folk took notice. Still, nothing was to be needed to be done until 2019.

There are a few software applications out there with Silverlight, the two key ones in many housing organisations being Keystone for asset management and 1st Touch mobile. The latter issues (in the forms designer), was announced as fixed by a replacement called ‘Versaa’ -  a couple of years back. That fix came with a cost however, as existing clients are aware.

The interesting one for me is the former and over the last three months have never been contacted by so many existing Keystone users. Several dozen appear to have only just woken up to the dangers of keeping it on their networks, particularly if there is web access. The risk of future vulnerabilities has meant that many ICT teams have moved their version to isolated internal servers and to near the top of their risk registers added to other known dangers, with good reason.

Keystone has been a very popular Asset Management package, which was bought up by Civica in 2014. I have over the years found it a very capable package, although rarely fully exploited or integrated well into HMS or other packages. In many cases, Asset Management can have been managed in its own organisational silo. In theory there is a replacement option from its owner, although its fair to say that organisations I have encountered are all keen to test the procurement market, including soft-testing.

While some lightweight options exist, it can be pretty expensive to replace Keystone properly and leverage considerable transformation too. Integrations as ever are trick to overcome, which can lead to looking more comprehensively at systems in use, particularly if they are knocking on a bit. No doubt about it, better transformation can be achieved with the assets area fully in the mix, together with potential significant savings. If you are a current Keystone user, it’s a thought worth popping into your cafetiere, and seeing if it comes out brown!

If you need any assistance getting to grips with life after Keystone, please reach out and have a chat on 07854-655009

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 brew ☕😋

       Related Post: Should the link between development and Asset management be much, much closer?

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.

Queen - Stone Cold Crazy.
(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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Making Plans For Nigel

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

I have spent a lot of time working with Planned and Cyclical maintenance as well as asset management. In fact it was the first area anyone got me involved with in social housing IT and I remember it well. An area filled with black magic and a feeling that systems cannot possibly do the complicated job of working out when to replace kitchens, paint blocks or service gas.

Well I can tell you honestly, its all do-able and as with all things, relies on accurate source data. There is no excuse at all these days for any budgets being knocked out for planned or cyclical programmes, not to be easily linked back to elemental data element instances. That's with either third party asset management software (you know, the Promasters, Codeman, Pimss, Keystones or Asprey's) or your HMS (Housing Management System) modules.

Three separate critical friend advisers to social housing have asked me about this disconnect in the last month. It's certainly a trend that most asset management decisions around Planned & also Cyclical maintenance, seem to be informed by Excel. As readers of this blog will be aware, I think Excel has its place, but perhaps not in building a £5m+ capital programme. I will tell you straight, if I were the custodian of that budget, I would like to be able to trace every Kitchen, Bathroom, Rewire etc back to a poor (or failed English Decent Homes, Scottish Housing Quality Standard or Welsh Decent Homes) instance.

With such large ticket expenditure shouldn't all capital work be easily linked back to real instances of data and practical completion links back to update the asset register. Maybe in another blogpost I may expand into Component Accounting. But right there is just one more reason to have a joined up process.    

If your asset team could not relate their Life Cycle Costing figures, 5 or 30 year plan to elemental data (to the nearest few thousand pounds), I would be pretty concerned.

Related Post: To collect your asset data, how about do you go about the survey process efficiently?

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You can link with me on LinkedIn here - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy It would be great to connect !

XTC - Making Plans for Nigel.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, or you could benefit from any of our services please get in touch and let me know!

You can access a quick list of 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 or issue.
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(Pro)Master and Servant

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/


Interesting news this week that one of the larger standalone asset management applications has been acquired by one of the larger housing management system providers. IN4, authors of Promaster has been swallowed up by ‘toon independent software house Orchard.  Many may recall a similar path that Codeman went down being bought by Anite, then becoming Northgate.


In both cases here is a product that runs on a different database platform than the buyer, Codeman SQL & Oracle, Promaster SQL-ish and Progress. Promaster had tried to encroach into housing territory with call logging and response repair modules, but of the many standalone products out there, it appeared to me as notoriously hard to integrate.  Taking this into account it’s maybe unlikely that Orchard may pick up more HMS customers by the acquisition. Moving everything to a MS SQL database platform looks to be the wisest move from where I am standing, if Orchard are interested.

As a customer of Promaster and I have met a few, I am sure you would have been reassured that no big changes are in the short term pipeline.  Promaster users might well benefit from improvements in support and call logging that Orchard might bring to the marriage. Maybe that formatted address may be split into sortable datafields soon. In the other direction, Orchard may well be able to incorporate new asset & planned maintenance functionality into the core housing offerings, lifted from what is successful in Promaster. 

It is becoming less and less logical to go for a standalone asset management module, when most HMS suppliers have already stepped up to the plate and improved their offerings. I hope you have noticed this, its crept up on many housing customers and many would be well advised to look again what your core software supplier can now provide.

It will be interesting to see what evolves out of this, something good I hope. I will keep my ear to the ground as to what my contacts tell me.

Tell me what you think of your asset management applications. Take the survey here.

You can link with me on LinkedIn here - uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/ It would be great to connect !

Read on to, Keystone, the next one to fall:

http://tonysmiththathousingitguy.blogspot.com/2014/05/turn-to-keystone.html

Depeche Mode- Promaster and servant.


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

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, please get in touch and let me know!

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Superfly Guy

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/

Like you I was sceptical when BBC's Tomorrows World promised us jet packs back in the 1970's. In December however, we heard about the plans for Amazon to deliver parcels by unmanned drones. Would you believe it,  just this week I saw a Midlands based housing group testing an octocopter, for possible surveillance & surveying around its estates. This one was a four propeller version fitted with HD camera, able to scale a 13 storied tower block and fly for nearly half an hour.  All for just over a £grand plus local permissions to fly.

UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), Long seen as the province of the armed forces, in far off lands surgically taking out insurgents or mistakenly the lives of innocents, these are now becoming a tool to be used by UK RSLs. Fitted with an infrared detector, they can locate cannabis farms in the lofts on your estates, track ASB silently or complete an estate fly-about, faster than your neighbourhood officers on foot.

These small vehicles (under 20Kg), can be programmed to GPS coordinates to fly remotely, without direct human control, collecting images or HD video footage. Buildings, power lines and other obstacles can be avoided. Of course, someone will have to box of who would be liable if an accident occurred etc. Before you can fly a UAV in the UK, a Remote Pilot Qualification (RPQ) is required. Once this is achieved, a remote pilot’s application for a “Permissions for Aerial Work” can be pursued. For the former, budget about £1,500 and the latter about £350.

So for around just under £3K you have a robust tool for asset condition survey, estate management that can  improve service and management of your stock. (More details at http://www.resource-uas.co.uk/RPASTraining/Bookingacourse/Pricelist.aspx ).

In the current wave of strange stormy winter weather coming east from the Atlantic, how much easier and cheaper would it be to survey flooded schemes at 30 metres up, to identify residents in danger or in need of assistance? These UAV's perform very well in weather too. Set a course and they have technology to follow it, taking into account gusts and prevailing winds. In many areas where helicopters have been the usual choice, or where helicopters cannot, developments in technology now make Unmanned Air Systems a viable alternative.

I am sure too that the naysayers will instantly poo-poo Drones as being bad for, and will be instantly rejected by tenants. I think not. If it was a choice between having scaffolding erected to inspect something or 40 mins with a surveyor with a drone, I think I know what I would choose.

Tenants will definitely have to be informed & informed in advance, like any other inspection visit. I wager they will be generally interested and will be keen to see what its all about. They obviously need their privacy respected.

This is an expanding area and one I am sure we will see more of in the near future in social housing and within many RSLs and groups. Drones will become a means of doing som ethings quicker and improving the whole customer experience.

You can link with me on LinkedIn here - uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/ It would be great to connect !

S-express - Superfly Guy .



PS- A big thank you to the lovely Jayne Elliot of Capita, who guessed I would be using this Terrorvision track, from Keighleys best. A top track and I have been playing the album all morning now as a result. Brilliant musical taste I thought! - Check it out yourself here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxQ11q07lnw  

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

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, please get in touch and let me know!

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