Kier unveils service model transformation at CIH

29 June 2017 – Kier Housing Maintenance unveils its new service model transformation at CIH, pioneering a new customer portal and a new big data algorithm, underpinned by a £6m investment in new IT and a commitment to give back 10% of profits to local communities.

The new customer portal is designed to put the tenant at the centre of the booking process. Available across phone, tablet and desktop, the portal enables residents to book repair work in a way and at a time that suits them, whilst clients benefit from a more efficient repairs schedule and increased resident satisfaction.

Alongside new technology being harnessed for the benefit of tenants, Kier is also pioneering a new big data algorithm that can effectively predict which properties are likely to need substantive repairs. This is then used to create a programme of predictive and proactive maintenance that generates real financial savings and can drastically reduce void periods.

Kier data on client locations already using the algorithm shows that 5% of homes swallow over 1/3 of client budgets when reactively repairing.

David Mawson, managing director, Kier Housing Maintenance said: “We wouldn’t wait for our cars to break down on the side of the road before repairing them. Yet our industry still largely relies on a reactive approach to maintenance, which ties up substantial chunks of budget on a small number of homes, pains residents with repeat repairs, increases void times and makes resource planning and scheduling far harder, less efficient and expensive to deliver.”

To deliver a transformed approach to their service model, Kier is investing over £6m in new IT, in both hardware and software solutions, which range from improved technology for colleagues delivering repairs to new software platforms to deliver a leading customer booking portal and new predictive algorithm.

David Mawson continued: “We can only harness some of the great potential that technology offers if we continue to invest in new equipment and the software to leverage latest thinking and innovations in areas like real time booking and big data modelling. So we are making a significant £6m investment and will continue to innovate and to invest.”

He concluded: “Underpinning all of this is a recognition that we are collectively working to improve the lives of our local communities, so we commit that we will give 10% of profits back to these communities as part of our service partnerships across the UK.

“We are working with clients to ensure our activities offer real, tangible benefits to residents and the wider community. More than 5,600 people benefited from our social value activities across the UK in the past financial year. In that time, we worked with Genesis to offer residents joint apprenticeship opportunities, trained our Kier North Tyneside apprentices as Dementia Friends and worked on a range of community projects, including rebuilding a children’s playground in Ipswich.”