The goal of the National House Maintenance Forum (NHMF) is to set the standard for maintaining assets for social housing.
Each year the NHMF invites maintenance managers from all over the UK, who are particularly proud of what their organisations have achieved, to submit projects for awards. This year these awards were presented at the NHMF Conference Awards Dinner, held at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole on the 26th of January.
In a new feature for 2016, all conference attendees were able to vote for their choice of Project of the Year, using the just- released Conference App. Once all the votes were counted, the Project of the Year award went to King Street Housing for their development and implementation, in partnership with larger organisation Morgan Sindall Property Services, of a brand-new asset-management model, PropertyCare.
This innovative asset-management approach, which involves using smarter business processes, such as a 60-point home check, as well as state-of-the-art technology, to intelligently capture asset and customer data, has enabled King Street Housing to remotely manage the maintenance of domestic boilers in a more preventative and proactive fashion. The PropertyCare model has effectively driven down responsive repairs and exceeded all expectations in terms of quality, efficiency and customer service. The cost savings that have resulted from this project will allow King Street Housing to invest in more planned maintenance works to the benefit of residents.
As far as the other categories: the Best Client award went to Trent & Dove Housing/Kensa Heat Pumps; Best small client was taken home by King Street Housing; the Best contract award
was presented to the Radian Group; the award for Most improved asset management service went to Laker/Friendship Care and Housing; and the Best customer impact award went to Rosebery Housing Association.
“Every year the quality of award submissions grows stronger and stronger,” states Liz Circuit, Secretary to the NHMF and Director of M3. “The NHMF has worked to shine a light on housing maintenance issues in the social housing sector. By bringing together maintenance managers and building a resource of best practice solutions, we have highlighted this aspect of the industry and helped to deliver improved rental housing maintenance and repair services.”
This year the Forum expanded the award category field. “For 2016, we added the Best small client award,” explains Liz, “in order to reflect the good work and positive impact that can take place when smaller organisations (sometimes in partnership with larger entities, such as this year’s collaboration between King Street Housing and Morgan Sindall Property Services) work to provide excellent service to their clients.”
Another exciting innovation for the NHMF Awards this year was the ability for all the attendees of the conference to vote for the Project of the Year, awarded to the best overall project from all five categories, using our newly released Conference App.
“The popularity of the event keeps growing each and every year,”says Liz, looking ahead to next year’s Forum, “making it difficult to accommodate everyone who would like to attend the ceremony. We look forward to receiving award submissions in 2017 that demonstrate cost-saving efficiencies
and innovation, particularly in the increasingly critical area of asset management.”
