Mobile Solutions and Surveying Case Study

A Property Asset Department Saves Money

Following a restructure of the Association, which resulted in a reduction of four staff within the Property Asset Department, it soon became clear that we would need to become far more efficient in order to be able to cope with the same workload. Investment in IT was the obvious solution.
Until this time all contract documents for programmed maintenance contracts and void property surveys had been produced by hand and then typed up to produce tender documents and works orders, which was a very long winded process. We decided to purchase the PowerSurvey software from DataBuild, operating through Psion Workabout handheld computers. From the information recorded on the handheld surveys, the software generates all our specifications, saving surveyors hand writing specifications and typists producing the final document.

At the survey stage we also take the opportunity to record relevant information to ensure our mainframe database is accurate and up to date, and to be able to forecast future expenditure as building elements fail and come to the end of their life. Previously this information was loaded on to the system by hand by our co-ordinators and again was extremely laborious and time consuming.

We use MS Access database as a collecting point, from which we are able to upload to our Unix corporate database, maintain tables of information in Access and mail merge to a schedule of instructions (the specification) in an MS Word document. The surveyor in a fraction of the time now carries out the entire process.
We have been so impressed by PowerSurvey that we are now expanding its use to enable our gas-servicing contractor to record and provide us with service information electronically. We will also be appointing DataBuild to produce a package for our responsive repairs surveyors to record repair information from our schedule of rates and then produce works instructions, which will be passed to our contractor electronically. We also recognise that the existing package we are using is capable of far more and this will be expanded in the coming months.

Areas with which we are particularly impressed are the ease with which we are able to modify and change the software as necessary and the fact that when hiccups occur, as they inevitably will, we have always been able to retrieve the survey information. DataBuild’s backup and service generally has been excellent.

The successful implementation of PowerSurvey has resulted in the Property Asset Department almost doubling its workload (in value) despite a significant reduction in staff.