Accent Nene Responsive Repairs

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Foster Property Maintenance (FPM) is providing Responsive Repairs and Voids services to over 4000 of Accent Nene’s housing and leaseholder properties spread across the counties of Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire,Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Rutland. Day-to-day repairs are reported by Residents into Accent Nene via a dedicated phone line with a small percentage being logged on their on-line facility.Whenever possible, Residents are transferred to dedicated contract administration staff at FPM who clarify exact details of the nature of the work and book an appointment with the resident.

Out of hours/emergency faults are reported to Accent Nene’s out of hours call centre who in turn contact our on call operatives with details of the fault.Our operatives then attend the property within 2 hours of receiving the call.

Day to day appointments are booked according not only to set priorities but also with consideration to geographical areas. This enables administration staff to book appointments based on areas in order that operatives time is used as effectively as possible.This method of appointment booking has a direct impact on our continued success regarding completions on target. Following the initial report of a fault, works orders are initiated by Accent Nene and received at FPM via electronic fax. When works orders are received our staff check that the order is valid, correctly described, correctly SOR coded and has the correct duration priority code.

Our processes then ensure that all residents are contacted the same day that a works order is received.Usually this is via the initial call being transferred, if this has not been possible, a Contract Administrator will telephone the resident that same day to try and arrange access. If 2 phone calls have been unsuccessful, a text message and/or email is sent followed by an access letter asking the resident to contact us as soon as possible.

At FPM we recognise that customer contact is key to the operational delivery of any Contract. We have therefore ensured that not only are we pro-active in making appointments, there are a variety of ways in which residents can contact us should they need to.

• Telephone lines manned from 7.30am to 5.30pm
• Out of hours message service
• Email address specifically for appointments
• TypeTalk facility
• Assistance via Language Line

All works orders and appointments are logged onto our work management system, Service Manager Plus (SMP).Works orders are then progresses through a flow chart of predefined milestones culminating in a sales invoice being raised. Each of these milestones is managed by a dedicated contract
administrator. SMP is fully auditable and allows us to see at a glance how many orders are currently at each milestone and how long it takes jobs to move through the flow chart. This ensures that the overall KPI of completions within target is achievable and measurable at every stage.

Wherever possible,FPM endeavours to employ multiskilled field operatives in order that we can provide a “right first time”service. To this end, all operative’s skills are assessed at our Training Centre against a skills matrix where we have ‘live’ mock-ups of typical repair scenarios.Preference is given to those who fall into the ultiskilled category. This is of course balanced with the need for specialist qualifications in some areas.

Our philosophy is that communication with residents throughout the various “milestones” of their works order is vital and this directly influences all procedures relating to this Contract. The main area of resident involvement is in the making of appointments; as standard practice,we offer all residents a choice of 2 or more days and a 2 hour appointment slot. Our staff also routinely ask if there are any school runs that we need to avoid, whether the resident would like our operative to call when he is on the way and whether there are any other issues that we need to be aware of i.e. just come out of hospital, allow plenty of time for resident to get to the door.

We aim for multiskilled operatives to complete all works orders at a property on the same day,however, there are instances where this is not practical due to specialist trades people being required. In these cases, we aim to book all operatives in at the same time; this not only reduces admin time and costs for us but also makes life easier for the resident.

We are actively involved with various resident forums at Accent Nene and as part of this we invited by Accent Nene to take part in a joint review of the Client’s lettable standard documentation along with Client and tenant representatives. As part of our commitment to the local community, we are assisting various
groups with community initiatives and projects to enhance the quality of local community.