Wrekin Housing Group, a leading housing association based in Telford, manages a vast array of housing projects, including the modern ShireLiving retirement properties. These properties encompass several apartment buildings tailored for comfortable retirement living, offering a variety of premium amenities and services. Despite their success, Wrekin Housing faced a significant hurdle: efficiently managing and recording day-to-day repairs and compliance across their properties. The solution? PlanRadar. Using the PlanRadar, Wrekin saw remarkable improvements in efficiency, accountability, and cost-effectiveness in their operations – reducing admin time by around 20%. Read on to find out how.
Why Wrekin chose PlanRadar
One of the primary challenges Wrekin Housing Group faced in their ShireLiving properties was the cumbersome process of tracking and recording repair work. Their existing process was heavily reliant on manual entries and paper records, which inevitably led to duplication of work and inaccuracies. And although this had no impact on the service, it was having an impact on the business.
The process made it difficult to know exactly how much time was being spent on maintenance and to record what had been completed, which stifled efforts to streamline the operations. As Jason Scott, Compliance & Delivery Manager (Care & Housing) at Wrekin – who was leading the efforts to streamline – said: “As a business, we had no true record of what was being done, to evaluate it and actually put something in place that was going to make life a little bit easier, more accountable and cost-effective”.
To overcome this, Jason Scott, alongside his colleagues Jason Nash & Stephanie Shinton (both Compliance and Delivery Supervisors at Wrekin) looked to a digital solution – PlanRadar.
How PlanRadar streamlined Wrekin’s processes
The implementation of PlanRadar began with a pilot project in two ShireLiving schemes – Beechwood and Springwood. Apprentices, working under the supervision of Jason Nash and Stephanie Shinton, were tasked with using PlanRadar for managing repairs and compliance in the properties – enabling electronic record-keeping and integration with existing tools like Google Forms.
With Jason and Stephanie working alongside the apprentices, this integration created a more centralised and efficient workflow, streamlining the process of assigning and tracking repair jobs in all 135 apartments across the two properties.
The results
Since adopting PlanRadar for the Beechwood and Springwood properties, Wrekin has seen significant improvements, both in their processes and outcomes.
As Jason Scott, put it, the use of PlanRadar has “saved a massive amount of initial time” in property management. And this time efficiency has been a game-changer. With reported savings of 15-20% in admin time, Jason estimates that Wrekin are now saving the equivalent of around 1 day every week on admin. This means that the team are freed up to complete more work and that the managers back in the office have a much clearer picture of what tasks are being completed and how long they’re taking.
On top of this, another benefit is that the ability to track repairs and compliance in real-time has enhanced the overall accountability within the organisation. This has given the team a newfound ease in keeping a tab on activities – making operations more transparent and accountable.
Clearly, Wrekin has achieved a lot with PlanRadar in this project. But what about the future? Well, the success of the PlanRadar implementation during the pilot has paved the way for its broader application across Wrekin Housing Group – which the team plans to make a reality in the next 18 months.
Jason Nash and Stephanie are both equally excited about the innovative solutions that the platform will bring to wider projects. As Jason Nash puts it: “whatever the operational requirement is, we can find a way of doing it in “PlanRadar.”
