Gravesham Borough Council: Streamlining the Maintenance of 6,000 Properties with Over 60 Engineers

Gravesham Borough Council is a local authority that provides a wide range of services to its residents, including the maintenance of nearly 6,000 properties in Kent, utilising a team of over 60 engineers. However, their services were previously managed through paper-based processes, making the operation of their maintenance work slow and cumbersome. The council realised the potential to improve their service and increase efficiency, accuracy, and visibility by adopting a modern, customer-centric approach.

Over £1 million of savings (a fifth of their budget)

Minor and major void turnarounds reduced by 75% and 71%

First-time fix rate increased from 67% to 87%

The support we have received from Oneserve has been like no other I’ve seen in this industry before. Our Oneserve Project Manager has been a mentor and given endless support."

Gravesham Borough Council

The Challenge

Gravesham sought out recommendations and after speaking with other local authorities and housing associations that were already using Oneserve, they decided to implement it for their transformation project. The council benefited from the insight and learnings from other successful transformations and was able to specify their requirements for Oneserve to be customised to meet their needs. The result was a solution that not only met their needs at the time of implementation but also allowed for future self-managed updates and improvements.

The Solution

After speaking to fellow Local Authorities and Housing Associations already using Oneserve, and carrying out their own detailed requirements process, Gravesham selected Oneserve to support their transformation project.

In addition to the benefits the system could bring, Gravesham also benefited from the insight and learnings we could share of other Local Authorities who have successfully transformed their repairs and maintenance process. This additional insight helped Gravesham to map out very specific requirements so that we could build Oneserve to meet their exact needs.

This build not only met the needs on the day of implementation; thanks to the self-managed capabilities of the system, it also meets their needs on an ongoing basis, because they can amend and evolve the software themselves.

The Result

Complete Transformation
Since 2017, Gravesham has been utilising Oneserve as their primary tool for managing repairs and maintenance, with the entire process now being run through the software.

With just a click of a button, the office team can schedule a job, and each operative can access and record job information on their mobile device. The result of this implementation is a complete transformation of Gravesham’s repairs and maintenance process.

“The scheduling capabilities of Oneserve are second to none, but the improvements we have seen in our service delivery go far beyond this. We have oversight of our entire workforce, which enables us to monitor performance and more accurately record job costings. We can also carry out safety checks through surveys, ensuring we remain compliant with legislation and our landlord responsibilities. Oneserve has become an entire workflow for our workforce, helping everyone operate productively.”

Significant Savings
Gravesham was able to cut over £1 million from their annual budget (reducing costs by 20%) by bringing works in-house and improving their practices. This is estimated to result in a savings of £3.8 million over 5 years and £23 million over 30 years.

“The changes we have implemented and savings we have achieved have not only improved the homes of the people living in Gravesham, they have also enabled us to invest in other areas that further enhance the service for our tenants. We have been able to invest in our workforce by recruiting more in-house staff to complete more work at a more competitive rate.”

Improved Service
The efficient use of tools and information has led to improvements in their service, including a higher first-time fix rate (from 67% to 87%), a maintained emergency repair rate of 100% (surpassing the target of 98%), a 97% customer satisfaction rating, and reduced void turnaround times.

Internal Buy-In
Moving to a technological solution was a major shift for an organisation that had previously relied on paper, but with nearly 50 remote workers and 25 office staff, everyone had to buy into the new solution for optimal performance.

“Every person in our repairs and maintenance process is vital in delivering service excellence. Due to Oneserve being so intuitive to use, everyone embraced the transformation. We booked a few training days from Oneserve to get us off the ground, but everyone picked it up so quickly. We now do training in house and have created our own manuals, which link up with our own in-house processes; Oneserve has been really easy to adopt.”

Continual Improvement
With a user-friendly interface, Gravesham can update the software as needed, ensuring their workflows remain efficient. Customisable reports and dashboards provide the insight needed to monitor, identify, and implement ongoing improvements.

“Something that really stands out is Oneserve’s flexibility. Oneserve moulds around us, as opposed to us moulding around it. Something we hadn’t expected from a software solution.”

* Over £1 million saved

(a fifth of their budget)

* First-time-fix- rate

increased by 20%

If I spoke to someone in local government I would say; if you want to make a significant transformation, then Oneserve is the perfect partner.”