Abstract
Bolton at Home (BH) is a large housing association, helping vulnerable people to secure housing within Bolton. One of their key objectives is to provide homes and neighbourhoods they can all be proud of. One of the key departments to obtain their objectives is the repairs and maintenance department, as they will ensure that properties are safe and functional for their tenants to rent.
This dissertation focuses on two divisions within the repairs and maintenance department. The two divisions gas and electric division and the day-to-day repairs division. They repair anything from broken toilet seats to faulty locks.
The dissertation focuses on the response times of both divisions, including how the company uses strategy to priorities repairs and maintenance programs and also the cost of ‘‘no access’’. This is when operatives cannot gain access to a property that has been allocated an appointment slot.
The problem areas within BH have shown that they are underperforming with their response times, especially with the day-to-day division who take much longer than their average response times. This could be due to the lack of technology to allocate and complete jobs. The lack of performance could hinder the tenant satisfaction level.
BH’s current strategy is to concentrate more on responsive maintenance over planned maintenance which could hinder both divisions performance, as there will be too few operatives and too many jobs.
The cost of ‘no access’ is a problem for both divisions in question and there is a need to control this as it is a cost to the company in both money and labour time. The company have devised strategies of how they could stop the cost of ‘no access’, for example, recharging the customer if they fail their appointments.