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August 29, 2005
Maintenance and Your "Action News Reporter"
A few weeks ago, in North Carolina, a woman who had a leak into her unit from the one above, got fed up with waiting for repairs and the lack of communication and called the "Action Reporter" at a local TV station. Guess what? The repairs were quickly made. Get used to this. Local media has discovered that they have a lot of readers/listeners/viewers who live in community associations and like it when the big, bad association/management company get their comeuppance. I've dealt with the PR aspects of this new media attention, but let's look at the cause of this particular one - maintenance.
One of the basic reasons management companies get contracts is because the board wants someone else to handle maintenance issues, especially in condos. As far as the board is concerned, its simple: Find or hear of a problem, determine responsibility, if its the associations - FIX IT (and do it yesterday if that wouldn't be too much trouble). Simple, right? What's the problem? The problem is that you probably don't have a clue as to what's really occurring.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you have a system in place that alows you to log in maintenance requests, no matter how they come in?
- Is the system easy to access for any staff member who might need to?
- Can the owner who put in the maintenance request track its progress without the help of your staff?
- Do you know what it costs you to administer (process) a normal work order from notice to completion?
- Have you established benchmarks for completing routine maintenance requests, i.e. 24 hours for leaks, 2 days for loose shingles, 3 days for sprinkler head problems, etc.?
- Do you know what an average number of work orders is for your associations? Do you know which associations are above the norm? And why?
- Do you routinely include a work order status report in your management report? Is the report generated without a great deal of staff time?
- Do you follow-up maintenance requests with with a communication asking the owner if they were satisfied with the service? Do you share these with the board? Do you compile these to see how you're doing overall, or how specific staff members are doing?
If you can't answer "Yes" to all of these questions, its time to overhaul your process. First you need to know how you're doing with customer satisfaction and, second, you need to know what its costing you. Both have major contract implications.
Management companies lose contracts when things don't get done and when you don't know they're not getting done, so you need some way to make sure that everything gets logged, followed up and measured. You will want some sort of warning system when things aren't getting done according to the benchmarks you establish. You will want to be able to show the board the scope of work you do and how well you're doing it.
A couple of years ago, an owner of a local management company decided to figure out how the work order sytem operated and what it cost him. He set up most of the above items and was able to determine what it cost him to "process" a typical work order. He then applied that cost to the number of work orders for each association. He found that most of the associations (condos) averaged a little over one work order per unit per year, with most variations relating to the age of the buildings. However one association came out at over 13 work orders per unit per year. Forget all of the other management duties, financials, meetings, etc. He was losing money on the work orders alone. Needless to say, it became the major item at future board meetings and contract negotiations. You need this data to get a handle on your costs and performance.
You don't need the local "Action Reporter" calling on you because someone on your staff dropped the ball. Get ahead of the work order process, put checks in place to warn you when things aren't going well and make it transparent, or easy to access, for everyone who needs to know.
Posted by joewest at August 29, 2005 11:48 PM