On the 19th July, many people breathed a sigh of relief at the lifting of restrictions on ‘freedom day’.
Many of us however, will take this as an opportunity to think clearly about likely consequence and what our focus should be over the coming months. It seems to be increasingly obvious that we will have to adapt to living with Covid19. Vaccines will provide us with the best possible assistance and their rapid development is perhaps the greatest scientific achievement of the 21st Century?
Vaccines alone are not the complete answer though and as we move into the autumn, we would probably benefit from looking at what things we can do differently to try and minimise the potential surge in seasonal infections to run alongside Covid19.
We have heard the same recurring challenges and issues, during our conversations with a cross section of the social housing sector, with many of them magnified during the past 15 months:
· Difficulty in gaining access to facilities to take manual compliance measurements.
· Desire to remove monthly inconvenience, associated with manual compliance measurements, from tenants who currently have to wait at home and allow potentially unwelcome access.
· Desire to reduce the risk and concern regarding manual compliance measurements and flushing been carried out inaccurately or not at all.
· Desire to minimise the Carbon footprint associated with manual compliance measurement at properties across fragmented geography.
· Desire to reduce water and energy waste associated with manual compliance measurement and inaccurately defined flushing regimes.
· Gain a real time understanding of asset performance and condition.
· Remove admin burden and drive compliance management digital.
· Desire to reduce operational costs and improve tenant wellbeing.
During times of recession, it is typical for most businesses to cut funding of ‘non-essential’ programs, with product development and innovation often one of the first to go. Those business who buck this trend and invest in that area during hard times, however, very often demonstrate a better, faster and long lasting recovery.
Similarly, during the hard times caused by Covid19, it would be easy for social housing providers to simply return to traditional manual methods as restrictions are eased. Those challenges and issues won’t go away however, unless you do something differently. At Plexus Innovation, we are delighted to be encountering a growing group from this sector that have realised this and are instead, embracing the opportunity to evaluate and implement our GUARDIAN® remote technology solution.
The next few months present an ideal opportunity for more innovative, forward thinking social housing providers to join us on the journey of removing manual measurement and instead, enjoy the wide range of benefits that can be gained by having a real time understanding of your facilities and assets.
You already understand the importance of protecting staff, tenants and guests from the risk of legionella. What if you could do this in real time, rather than relying on a random, once per month check? What if you could also optimise and reduce energy costs, identify taps left running, water leaks, water heaters under stress and failing assets to enable early intervention all at the same time?
How many of you miss visits and waste time, cost and human resource when tenants don’t or can’t wait in for your team and how many of you would like them not to have to ever again?
Road to net zero is, rightly, a subject currently at the forefront of the minds of many social housing leadership teams. What is perhaps not, as until now there has never been a viable better solution, is the positive effect that removal of manual compliance measurements and use of effective, targeted flushing of outlets can have in significantly reducing your water and energy waste. Also imagine the additional positive impact of reducing vehicle use and freeing up human resource to carry our more valuable, productive duties.
We have demonstrated conclusively that all of this can be achieved just by committing to doing things differently and employing technology and data to do the work.
I would suggest that in this context, GUARDIAN® becomes more than just a ‘nice to have’. It becomes an essential part of your toolbox required to deliver a safer, more efficient, effective and sustainable social housing provision.
If you’d like to talk further about becoming one of our growing group of those prepared to do things differently, I and the Plexus Innovation team, would be delighted to hear from you, so please don’t delay and give us a shout right now…
GUARDIAN® is designed developed and manufactured in the UK by Plexus Innovation… to book your free demonstration get in touch, using one of the below methods.
www.plexus-innovation.com / info@plexus-innovation.com / 0191 9223969