Better planning for voids

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Housing organisations work in many different ways when handling voids. What suits one will not suit another - so best practice is not always identifiable.

With responsive repairs, by way of contrast, 80% of organisations respond to them in a similar way.

Not so for voids. Many organisations have not reviewed how they handle voids for years. Some still record data manually on whiteboards, others use basic project-planning software. Few have embraced the digital age.

As a social landlord’s primary source of income is derived from rents, a management policy must minimise the time a property is vacant to maximise revenues.

Within that reduced turnaround time, work to re-service a void must meet a quality lettable standard, while the letting process and any work undertaken must also meet customer service standards that leave clients ‘highly satisfied’.

Organising work on void properties is a complex and challenging process, particularly if it is carried out manually.

While a definition of best practice remains elusive, Kirona believes there is a better way of controlling the workflow. But to change, landlords must first analyse the way they manage voids.

They must pinpoint:

• Who defines what work needs to be done. Is it the housing manager, client, direct labour organisation, in-house workforce or contractor?
• How data is collected. Is it electronically captured, or manually keyed into a back-office system?
• Why is data being recorded? Is it to create a programme of work, or an alphabet soup of schedule codes?
• Whether a void team has a dedicated resource pool or shares resources with responsive teams.

Historically, the focus of responsive repairs has been on back-office management systems, intelligent appointing, dynamic scheduling and mobile working, but at Kirona our sympathies lie with the void planners whose role has been further complicated by so many variables.

It has been described as flying a jumbo jet - with as many levers and dials to monitor voids as to keep a plane airborne.

The void planner must be able to prioritise projects, co-ordinate the sequencing and dependency of work, and ensure there are sufficient resources available to deliver all void projects within turnaround targets.

Staying with the jumbo jet analogy, changing course mid-flight is a challenge for the void planner. But social landlords regularly change their priorities on project completions as circumstances change. New vacancies arise that can be re-let quickly, clients request urgent re-housing, planned tasks overrun or are completed earlier than expected, or operatives are absent from work.

All of the above mean the poor void planner will have to scrap their schedule and start again.

We launched our Project Planner to help software automate the management of voids, complex jobs and planned works. It offers visibility of completion dates, sequencing and dependencies between work packages, resource bottlenecks, and enables flexibility so that changing priorities, overruns, and resource availability can be managed. It is already playing a vital role in helping landlords meet the challenges of void properties, as demonstrated by the case studies overleaf.