Contract synopsis
Mears Group deliver asset management services to Milton Keynes Council’s 11,500 properties, including 1,600 leaseholders. The wider contract includes regeneration development of the housing stock, which predominantly comprises of traditional-build housing from 1960s-1970s, with some non-traditional properties.
Within this contract, Mears deliver domestic and commercial gas works for Milton Keynes Council. Domestically, Mears services over 11,000 boilers also including other forms of heating, such as oil and solid fuel appliances.
Commercially, we delivered annual services to over 60 sites equating to over £150,000 of repairs and £1.2million boiler installations.
What did we do?
Mears worked in close partnership with Milton Keynes to deliver against the annual targets to reduce repairs per property and annual void spend. A major contract objective included the transition from reactive spend to planned capital investment and regeneration.
Commercially, we delivered annual services to over 60 sites equating to over £150,000 of repairs and £1.2million boiler installations. We responded to over 70,000 calls, both in and out of hours to our gas call centre and also delivered 30,000 responsive repairs and 744 major and minor voids. In addition to this, we delivered estate-based and communal area work which totalled £2.8million.
What were the outcomes?
Reduced Repairs
We reduced the number of repairs per property to 2.79 per year against a target of 3.5. This has resulted in the delivery of 1,582 fewer repairs than the outgoing contractor achieved in the previous financial year. This was achieved by our effective repairs first time service encompassing accurate diagnostics and ‘soft fix’ repair help over the telephone, our improved stock accuracy, and up-to-date training. This in turn delivers a superior service to tenants.
By sourcing alternative products and streamlining working methods, we have seen the following reductions:
- Time spent onsite (reduced by 3%)
- Material purchasing (lead-in times reduced by 5 days)
- Hire costs (re-negotiated long-term agreements, culminated in 3% savings)
Reduced response times
At the outset of the contract, the KPI for routine repairs was 28 days. Using detailed MCM data and data analytics software (Power BI), we analysed the trades in greatest demand to inform the optimum workforce.
Achievement against KPIs
Along with the other productivity initiatives already outlined, this helped us to reduce the average routine repair to 14 days, offering a much speedier service for tenants. Milton Keynes Council was keen to continue with this trend and taking a collaborative approach, reinvested their share of the savings this year in the service. This enabled us to increase our local trades resource to help us to further reduce the response time to 10 days for routine repairs.
Increased customer satisfaction
We have developed a unique digital tracking module MCMLive, which allows tenants to track/amend their appointment through their smartphones, and view where operatives are on a map (similar to Uber). This involves:
- SMS sent to tenant immediately when the appointment is made at a time most convenient to them.
- Designated web link for tenants to click, opens MCMLive.
- Ability for tenant/operative to message each other and reschedule appointment, if necessary.
- Residents can add appointments to their own phone’s diary.
- MCMLive has helped in our overall reduction in no access rates of 12.
