Thirteen boosts FM services with BigChange mobile tech
The North East’s largest housing association, Thirteen is transforming its facilities management (FM) services with new mobile workforce management technology supplied by Leeds-based BigChange.
The system, which incorporates CRM, job scheduling, a customer portal, vehicle tracking and a mobile app, is helping to improve services, reduce costs and boost productivity.
Thirteen’s facilities management team provides services such as grounds maintenance, estate care, caretaker and cleaning services to its 70,000 customers.
“Previously we relied on a combination of paper records and spreadsheets and with the volume of work we had it was clear we needed to replace what was a cumbersome, largely manual system,” says Michael Hall, Senior FM manager, Thirteen. “BigChange has transformed the way we work by eliminating paper and providing complete visibility of our work.”
Thirteen’s mobile teams carry out planned and reactive maintenance. Equipped with tablets running the 5 in 1 JobWatch mobile app linked to real-time vehicle tracking, the devices are used for everything from vehicle inspections, COVID-19 safety checks and electronic job sheets linked to photographs from site.
"JobWatch gives us a live 24/7 view of all our work; scheduled and reactive. It’s the data that the system collects and processes that is really useful. We have real insight into our actual costs and performance – something we simply didn’t have before. Now we can look at our performance against what are more realistic targets.
“Already we’ve been able to halve daily mileage, reducing wasted travelling time and costs and we expect we will be able to dramatically improve our productivity through better resource planning, allocation and coordination,” Hall comments.
