John Grooms Housing Association

4D manages strategic maintenance planning for a leading housing association.

 

The Challenge

To co-ordinate and manage a maintenance programme for over 1,200 diverse properties.

There has always been a shortage of specialist housing for people with disabilities in the UK. In 1971 John Grooms Housing Association began its first pioneering housing development for the disabled in North London. Since then, the association has grown rapidly to handle 140 schemes of more than 1,200 properties.

The Association needs to handle a vast amount of information about the type and maintenance needs of its housing stock. Over 50,000 items of work are planned over the next 30 years with a total cost exceeding £20 million. To help cope with the planning of the strategic maintenance John Grooms wanted a flexible management solution.

The Solution

A powerful property maintenance system written in 4D.

John Grooms selected Domaine a packaged property maintenance system written by 4D developers, Be Informed. The power and flexibility 4D offered, plus the ease with which an attractive use-interface could be built helped ensure that this 4D-based solution was the clear choice for this critical task.

Domaine runs on 4D Server and integrates all aspects of property management and maintenance from stock types, tenant details and correspondence, plans and photographs through to planned and reactive maintenance, gas servicing and asbestos issues. 4DŒs power and ability to create an intuitive user-interface were key considerations in this decision.

Domaine provides a comprehensive range of reports and allows complex expenditure profiles to be charted and presented in an easy to understand format. Links are available to other management systems via ODBC and a planned web portal will give flexible access to the system for staff, consultants and contractors.

The Reward

John Grooms can efficiently manage, analyse and report on the large volume of work that they undertake and can produce clear and concise presentations for future expenditure plans.

?Domaine is a powerful and flexible system which gives us quick and easy access to the management information we need. We can also analyse different scenarios for our long term maintenance programmes,? said a John Grooms spokesman. ?This flexibility and the ability to use the system for tracking the attributes of our properties were important factors that led to us choosing this 4D system.?