Social housing asset performance optimization

Social housing is under pressure across the world, particularly in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. The challenges of 2020 sharpened pre-existing pressures to squeeze the sector, with heightened demand coupled with government austerity measures.

Statistics are still being compiled, with preliminary estimates that:

• USA homelessness jumped almost 50% in 2020
• USA ‘housing cost burdened’ households spending 30%+ income on housing rose from 30.2% of the country to around 40% - but that a far greater proportion of housing cost burdened will spend 50%+ on housing than prior to 2020
• Australian social services are under pressure, with one state predicting homelessness to increase by 24% between October 2020 and June 2021 (NSW Council of Social Services)
• Noticeable homelessness increases in Germany including treble in Berlin

It is clear that demand for social housing will expand as the immediate and long-term impacts of the economic decisions made around COVID-19 are revealed. A clear demand will be that efficiencies are implemented across social housing networks so that services can be expanded.

Understand the challenge

Social housing networks need to increase focus on information utility and long-term asset network performance optimization to deliver value to the communities they serve, and maximize the lifecycle of accommodation in the networks. Without excellent asset data and the capacity to make fast robust decisions, social housing networks will expose themselves to a huge financial risk that will compromise the capability for their community to continue serving these crucial needs.

High performing social housing networks will rely on their data – which means, they will rely on having the right data, served in a manner that assists the execution of robust and accurate decisions, at a velocity that lowers maintenance and repair operation (MRO) costs and elevates service delivery. They need to access the right information, quickly synthesize intent and opportunity and react – from operational works through to senior strategic investment policy making.

The social housing sector has long been impacted by outmoded data platforms, heavily manual processes and little coordination between systems and networks. This has put many social housing networks in the position of having weak intelligence on which to draw.

The impact of such weak intelligence foundations include:

• Short term plans such as 6-12 months
• Plans focused on reactive repairs and compliance
• Stop-start programmatic works delivery, due to coordination challenges that blow out efficiency targets (inability to effectively coordinate tenants and contractors)
• Unclear understanding of MRO costs, average notification to repair times, and that same information to contrast between different regions or asset network sub-groups
• Lack of social housing asset network intelligence; incorrect housing status, inaccurate location and condition data, missing compliance certifications
• Inability to capitalize on opportunities available through government sources; for example, limited, inaccurate and difficult to compile social housing network condition stymies application for inclusion in USA state funding schemes opened early in the new year, or similar issues with Australian social housing networks accessing funds available through the federal ‘National Disability Insurance Scheme’ for housing improvements

Different countries, same result

Incomplete, inaccurate, and low quality portfolio data makes short and long-term asset management difficult – and it makes asset network performance optimization impossible. Complete, accurate and high-quality asset portfolio data is foundationally vital to understanding network condition, formulating performance optimization plans, and managing the execution of those plans.

With well-founded, fiscally advantageous plans, leaders will be able to gain the support of stakeholders – social housing stakeholders are often combinations of government, NGO and NFP delegates, requiring cohesive agreement to plans.

Lessons from asset network performance optimizers in other sectors

Technology has enabled a quantum leap in asset network performance optimization; many if not all of these lessons are relevant to social housing asset optimization. That is to say, that asset network managers do not need to increase funding, but instead (or at least first) integrate new digital techniques to better and more efficiently manage housing.

There have always been options for superlative social housing optimization – at a cost. Asseti brings a practical capability to optimize without adding to operational administration at all, and at a very low price. Clients typically see positive return on investment (ROI) within a small number of months.

Instead of increased funding, we advocate for spreading current social housing investment into new possibilities, so the housing stock under management better meets the tenant’s needs while being financially sustainable.

Social housing lifecycle management

As a dedicated asset network optimization platform, Asseti simplifies onboarding and practical use. Social housing management best practices are explained below, with a guide to how each is simplified with Asseti.

Social housing needs to center on the properties

This key point is relevant both technically and ethically. Professionals in the social housing space are always mindful of the people or families, and the properties they inhabit. Simultaneously, from a technical perspective, all inspections, maintenance and repairs are conducted at a property level and data must therefore be just as easily reviewed at a property level as at a family level. It must furthermore be possible to aggregate to an estate, complex, suburb, or region level – any classification grouping your social housing network uses must be easily adapted into the asset network performance and optimization platform you use. Non-traditional assets such as carparks, garden areas, common spaces and playgrounds must also have a place in this management solution.

Therefore the solution must:

• Incorporate standard property and network hierarchy categorization; regionally, type based, location, or whatever is meaningful to your social housing network
• Streamline internal and external inspection reports to facilitate fast responses
• Connect with other asset information systems, in an ethical way; this generally means hard segregation between asset management and family details, and a hard connection to works order systems
• Historical status reporting available in an intuitive and accessed within 3-clicks
• Data and insights centred spatially and with auditable timestamps that cannot be edited

Intelligence extends to hardware and appliances

Accurate records of the appliances and hardware at sites is key to effective asset network management and optimization. Generally assets that can be damaged and replaced are recorded; internals like carpet or ovens, and external such as guttering. Gutters are an excellent example of how insights can differentiate servicing and decrease maintenance and repair costs – social housing in metropolitan Los Angeles may have no nearby trees and require gutter maintenance annually or less, whereas a regional Georgia property with close vegetation may require gutters to be cleared monthly during autumn, while social housing asset managers in Minnesota need to accommodate both the leaf litter of fall and the challenge of heavy snowfall.

Systems should enable management of:

• Standard appliance and hardware references
• Item location and key details
• Basic condition gradings; Asseti ranks components and issues on a 1-10 priority level and with a 3-stage risk assessment
• Risk and implication metrics, that can be aggregated to assess the entire network or sub-regional networks
• Visual records, defensible and auditable

Asseti is designed for asset management, the built environment , and built-environment adjacent elements in the asset network envelope.

Defect and issue identification and review capability

Asset network performance optimization centers on issue identification at a property level, with rectification to avoid major issues. The information used in this can be analysed to identify trends that may reveal systematic issues - why are repairs in arrears 3-months in one region compared to the overall average of 1-month? Are additional maintenance contractors required?

Such issues can only be resolved with data and insight.

Issues notifications should be:

• Easily logged
• Identified with a programmatic approach while accommodating exception reporting
• Standardized within the platform
• Enable photographic evidence of the matter
• Enable free text descriptions for greater intelligence
• Facilitate cost estimates directly within the platform by contractors or maintenance operators

Asseti is built around flexible visual interfaces that facilitate the above at an operational and strategic asset network performance optimization level.

Analytics that build and enrich year on year

Social housing network providers and leaders must internalize their use of data in decision making, and see it as foundational to performance and performance optimization. Shifting to Asseti enables a digital twin of your social housing network to be formed very economically and quickly, and immediately eliminates the location and composition uncertainty endemic to virtually all asset networks.

As visual and other data layers in Asseti a genomic tapestry is built so that asset performance optimizer can understand in detail conditions at the property and gain predictive insights from the platform within the Asseti Paradigm program.

From this a lifecycle analysis, condition forecasting, scenario modelling and qualitative analysis becomes more and more robust over time. The goal of asset management is understanding risk in a way that is almost prescient, which is finally a reality due to massive advances in data science and machine learning. With intelligent platforms like Asseti, social housing network operators and decision makers can evaluate or make decisions around potentials 1, 5 and even 20 years distant. This insight assists social housing operators and governments to plan appropriately for social housing requirements and optimize existing networks to optimally benefit the community.

Next steps for social housing asset network operators and managers

Make a robust asset register and plan around it

The first step is to know your network. Plan an inspection regime that touches all properties so that they are accurately geolocated.

Gaining the information to generate the asset register is the starting place – using this information to generate a lifecycle analysis to know what’s coming up over the next 10 to 20 years is the next stage. What really matters, is using these results to produce a list of planned projects prioritised by risk, based on evidence and optimized by considering available funding.

Standardize on pre-built or customized best practice dashboards

Understanding and optimizing your social housing asset network is the ‘price of entry’ to securing new investment and expansion of properties and service availability.

Asseti’s dashboards enable reporting by site, asset and issue – with reports configured for the level of zoom required by the user. Dashboard reports can encompass the entire network – to evaluate outstanding maintenance and repair costs, repair velocity (report to repair lapse) or the overall risk level. Users can also drill to regional segments or individual sites for more granular insight.

Social housing networks preparing for the coming years need to start their journey – even if it is as simple as knowing all your property locations! From that simple starting point, Asseti has helped other asset network operators build a lite digital twin view, and build insight up with monitoring zones, components and other layered data.

This can be considered challenging – as all new endeavors are challenging – and the key is to start. Asseti has experience guiding the onboarding of asset networks in a way that promotes best practice; we currently have assets across 5 continents managed through our platform.

Set a convenient time with Asseti for a tailored social housing demonstration, or claim your free trial account at the button below to start loading in your data.

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