![National Housing Maintenance Forum [heading]](../_images/Site_title.gif){kind=small}
![National Housing Maintenance Forum [logo]](../_images/nhmf_logo.gif){kind=logo}
Download the papers from the sessions by clicking on the hyperlinks:
1 Managing maintenance contracts in the age of Egan
Kier have set up a joint venture company with Sheffield to manage their repairs service, and described how it is working.
Richmond Housing Partnership set up an innovative partnering arrangement with Mears to manage their response repairs, and some of their major repair works. Linda Wallace and Darren Pace spoke frankly about their successes and failures, and their response to them.
Simon Bullen (Kiers), Richard Hawson (Sheffield BC)
Linda Wallace (RHP), Darren Pace (Mears)
David Miller (author of the NHF Schedule of Rates) considered alternative approaches to the procurement of repairs and their suitability to organisations with large or small amounts of stock, predominantly estate-based properties, street properties, rural or scattered stock, multi-region stock. He discussed the use of measured term contracts and a number of partnering solutions to suit these different circumstances.
David Miller (Rand Associates)
Trevor Lawrence joined Harding 6 years ago as Property Services Director. After maintenance contractors continuously failed to deliver, he set up a DLO 3 years ago and at the end of 2003 achieved top ratings from the Housing Inspectorate for Harding's repairs and reinvestment services.
Trevor Lawrence
(Harding HA)
Neal Ackcral (Harding HA)
4 Leadership skills for maintenance managers
Patrick Hibbin is a consultant specialising in executive coaching. He was previously a manager at Mowlems. In this workshop he looked at skills involved in leading a team, and representing the team within a larger organisation, and what can be done to improve them.
Patrick Hibbin
Wayne Hughes is a former director of building services with experience in both the housing association and local authority sectors, and currently works with Housing Quality Network to advise on maintenance and stock investment. Good contract management is fundamental to managing any contract, whether it is under partnering or a more traditional measured term contract.
Wayne Hughes (Housing Quality Network)
Michael Murdie discussed the potential benefits from supply chain management, and some of the practicalities of setting it up. It is important to set realistic objectives, and to review how these are being achieved. Michael spoke about Jewson's experience with clients.
Michael Mudie (Jewsons)
Patrick looked at negotiating skills and how these can be applied to ensure that agreements meet your objectives and are fair to both parties. Similar skills are relevant in dealing with conflicts that arise in managing a contract.
Patrick Hibbin
8 Contract Management from a contractor's perspective
Chris has been involved in setting up and managing a number of partnerships on response repair contracts and talked about repairs and maintenance contracts from a contractor's perspective.
Chris Cheshire (Hudsons)
A very practical session on report writing, aiming to assist you in identifying your own strengths and indicating what you can do to overcome weaknesses.
Wayne Hughes (Housing Quality Network)
10 Partnering with multiple contractors
CDS Housing in Liverpool manage their repairs, maintenance and stock reinvestment programmes through a partnership involving five separate contractors, using the NHF Schedule of Rates. Wayne Gales explained why they took this approach, how they implemented it, and how it is working in practice, enabling them to control the quality and cost of services.
Wayne Gales (CDS)
Wayne has run mock inspections at a variety of housing organisations to assist them in identifying their own strengths and weaknesses and to prepare for a visit from the Housing Inspectorate.
Wayne Hughes (Housing Quality Network)
Jez Leaper of KPMG has analysed Checkmate for the last three years and writes the Checkmate reports. Phil Smith of Ocean Housing (formerly Restormel) is on the Checkmate Working Party and has participated in both client and contractor studies on Checkmate. This session looked at the findings from Checkmate, and what participants can learn from it.
Jez Leaper (KPMG)
13 How DLOs are addressing the Egan Agenda
With the introduction of competitive tendering, local authorities were expected to separate client and contractor functions in providing a repairs service. Under partnering, we are all exploring the potential benefits of running them as a single service. Phil Smith of Ocean Housing (formerly Cornwall District Council) lead a discussion on how to gain the benefits and avoid the pitfalls
Phil Smith (Ocean Housing)
Yorkshire Housing pioneered links between Locator Plus and the Orchard Archouse system to manage appointment systems that adapt to the length of jobs on the NHF Schedule of Rates. They have been experimenting with using handhelds for surveyors to link to their IT systems remotely to record repairs. He will also talk about using customer surveys in their partnering meetings with contractors.
Bob Williams showed some of the advanced features of Locator Plus, including tailoring a schedule of rates, and setting up appointments.
Graham Teed (Yorkshire Housing)
Karen Arnold (Yorkshire Housing)
Bob Williams (M3 Housing)
15 Spotlight on cost effectiveness
Patrick Symington talked about the new initiatives on "value for money" coming out of the ODPM, and the cost effectiveness agenda. How do benchmarking clubs such as Housemark and Checkmate assist organisations demonstrate value for money?
Patrick Symington (Housemark)
Tim Wilson was property services director at Westlea HA, and now leads M3 Consultancy. He looked at the future for maintenance with the increased focus on asset management rather than development as the key drivers in business plans. The profile of maintenance and asset management will have to rise if we are to meet the challenges and continue to be seen as good landlords
Tim Wilson (M3 Housing)
The next NHMF Best Practice Maintenance conference will be 25th - 26th January 2005 in Birmingham. Click here if you would like to make a booking.