Repairs and Maintenance Case Study

Swindon Services: when Best Value brings the best deals

"ROCC is now a major player in the local government contracting and business management technology arena. We believe that the company probably has the best solution currently available." - Bill Fisher, head of business support for Swindon Services.

Swindon Services encompasses all the usual client/contractor elements including recreation, leisure, golf courses, catering, cleaning, school meals, housing, grounds and so on. The Council's area has 11,000 council house stock, a population of some 176,000.

"Although we were able to select ROCC Uniclass as our replacement by the end of 1997, said Bill Fisher head of business support "the impact of coping with the changes and operational needs caused by the creation of the Unitary Authority occupied many people during 1997-1998. The implementation of our technology solution had to be delayed, but by 1999 we had created a project team and put the accelerator to the floor!

"We chose housing and building maintenance - also because it is one of the most complex interacting departments, with 'tentacles' going throughout the business. If we could set this one up successfully, we would already have provided many of the systems and links that the other service areas would need.

"The first job orders of the new year went through smoothly and we quickly reached the 1000 -1500 weekly housing maintenance job orders average.

"We then introduced Uniclass to the majority of the other services, beginning with the simpler ones - housing, building, stores, fleet management, part of grounds, highways, catering cleaning timesheets, job controls - all within the first six months of 2000.

"The far-reaching 'tentacles' of housing and building maintenance made it a good start point. We had to ensure links to materials, stores, and direct purchases and so we needed to connect to procurement, plus vehicles and so on.

"Other projects that quickly reaped rewards included the barcoding of stores. We have 9000 plus barcoded product lines and millions of transactions.

"We actually barcoded individuals - they each have cards for themselves - and also introduced job cards printed with barcodes, so every item taken from stores had to be attributed to a live job and a current member of staff. Key punch errors virtually disappeared, a huge benefit in terms of accuracy of stock records.

"The next development, which we are piloting for ROCC, is the appointment system. As part of Best Value we were being encouraged to offer timed appointments to housing tenants, not just a commitment to carry out work within three days, our previous performance indicator.

"Our target is for 1000 plus jobs with appointments per week. The system has been in place for six months now and this has been met. We are achieving 95% success in meeting our times. End users are much happier and administration has been reduced. All are good news for the council.

As Bill Fisher points out: "There are many challenges for the future for ROCC, not least of which is keeping up with the demands of its users as the applications for their software become more and more advanced and widespread. One other challenge placed upon us by government is the targets for e-procurement; this is also an area the authority is currently working on closely with ROCC."

He concludes: "We see the company and its systems as an integral part of the future of Swindon Services, enabling us to meet the demands of our customers and government."