Nov/Dec 2004

Middlesbrough Borough Council's housing services department reckons a new mobile maintenance system will eliminate paperwork, halve administrative processes in its billing system and allow it to get over two hours' more productive work from each of its field workers. The system is being provided by iTouch Business.

In 2003, the housing services maintenance division handled 26,886 emergency and urgent repairs to its housing stock of 13,200 properties. David Jamison, its maintenance operations manager, says it was suffering major quality and productivity issues as result of the sheer volume of paperwork, the lengthy administrative process and lack of field staff autonomy.

"Before the iService system was implemented," he says, "trade operatives would have to report into one of four depots around the borough two to three times a day. Here they would collect repair job paperwork from their supervisor, return it later, and gather the materials needed for the repairs.

"We estimate that this process was wasting two to three hours of time per operative." Every repair job also had to go through a seven-person maintenance process, involving call centre staff, data administrators, supervisors and trade operatives.

 

iService, a mobile service management and parts ordering system, exchanges all customer and job data over a wireless network. It runs on O2's XDAII devices and GPRS mobile network. The software enables MBC's housing services maintenance department toschedule and transmit service and repair jobs automatically to the trade operative's mobile device in real time.

It can also approve completed repairs, either automatically on low-value jobs, or electronically through the administrative Web portal. It electronically records job completion data, including parts used, schedules of rates and customer signature. It also monitors operational efficiency through data reporting and analysis tools, and records tenant satisfaction data.

Transfer of data between operatives and the borough's Comino Saffron housing management legacy system is now said to be instant, measurable and 100 per cent accurate, and there is no repair paperwork to complete by hand.