Housing Repairs and Maintenance: How to Improve Your ‘Right First Time’ Score

It’s becoming increasingly challenging for social housing organisations to meet the rising standards set for social housing repairs and maintenance services. All organisations want a first-time resolution when it comes to handling repairs, as it helps them to save time and money and create a more efficient working environment.

The ultimate goal is to get the right engineer, materials and equipment on the job as quickly as possible, providing a high level of service on arrival. However, achieving this ‘Right First Time’ (RFT) outcome isn’t always easy.

In this article, we will look at what RFT is and how you can improve your RFT score. With our advice, you should be able to please your customers, improve your organisation’s reputation and deliver consistently high service levels.

What is Right First Time?

RFT is achieved when something is done correctly the first time, every time. No time or money should be wasted correcting errors caused by not doing the job properly. This term has been used widely across social housing organisations for many years, as carrying out maintenance work and repairs has gradually become more demanding.

With RFT, you’re eliminating engineer no-shows, incomplete jobs, jobs done to an unsatisfactory standard and any other obstacles that may impact performance. RFT is an important part of a social housing organisation’s service to customers, aiming to make site visits less time-consuming and more efficient. Ultimately, in any working environment, RFT is a win-win for both the service provider and the consumer.?

There will obviously be occasions when RFT isn’t achievable, such as when multiple trades are required to complete a job or the work is going to take a lot longer than anticipated. This is why when defining RFT you need to be slightly flexible, so you can take into account situations where this occurs.

How to improve your ‘Right First Time’ score in five steps

Improving your RFT percentages as a social housing organisation is no easy feat. However, there are some steps you can take in order to increase your chances of getting maintenance and repairs Right First Time.??

1. Improve your planning processes

Leaving your field-based workers with incomplete information and little time to complete a job will seriously impact their ability to deliver high levels of service. If time is tight or they are missing information, then the chances are that the work will not be completed on the day and RFT percentages will take a hit.

Where possible, you want to avoid follow-up jobs or call-backs, ensuring the job gets completed the first time of asking. In order for this to succeed, you need to ensure your planning process is watertight.?

This means having adequate housing repairs software that includes repair diagnostics, comprehensive job management and real-time management reporting to ensure your maintenance staff are fully prepared for the job.

2. Identify areas of failure and build on past experiences

Mistakes are made to be learnt from, which is why it’s important to reflect on why work has failed previously and what needs to be done to make improvements. Analysing a failed service may seem daunting, but it’s an essential part of making sure you get things right, as you can pinpoint the exact reasons that led to the downfall of a particular job.?

Using this past experience, you can figure out what steps you need to take to ensure it’s not repeated. You can also ascertain a lot from customer feedback.??

3. Assign your best-skilled workers

Your field-based workers will ideally be multi-skilled and able to turn their hands to a variety of different jobs. However, there will be those that are more appropriate for certain jobs and have a better skill set in order to complete the job to the highest standards. For example, if inexperienced staff get sent to a site where more technical work is required, then the chances are high that the job will either not be done properly or a more experienced worker will have to come out at a later date to do it.

Getting to know your workers’ strengths and weaknesses is an important aspect of RFT, so you can ensure you’re always sending out the best individual for the job. Not only will this benefit both your organisation and the customer, but it will also make working conditions a lot more comfortable for your field-based workers.

4. Work on improving communication between office and field-based staff

Communication is key at any organisation, but this is especially important when you have staff split between different working environments. Inaccurate work conducted in the office can lead to a whole host of problems for on-site field workers. If they don’t receive a clear diagnosis of the issue and what needs to be done, then they’ll unlikely be able to do the job properly and repeat visits will be required.

Having the right software in place and efficient processes, as well as fully trained and capable office staff, can help to ensure jobs are done RFT – saving you time and money, while improving customer satisfaction.

5. Avoid complacency and keep developing

When applied correctly, RFT is hugely beneficial to a social housing organisation. You may not think you need to apply the RFT principle and that things are running smoothly enough without it, but trust us, it will only ever improve your current service offering if done properly.?

Good managers should always want to avoid making repeat mistakes and improve performance, which is where RFT comes into its own and motivates organisations to develop. If you’re complacent and sit still, then you will be left behind other more forward thinking housing organisations will leave you behind.

Continuous development is incredibly important, so don’t be afraid of failing and having to overcome difficult hurdles in achieving your RFT ambitions. Ultimately, the process of improving your RFT score and performance will only help your social housing organisation in the long run.

Whether it’s our industry-leading housing repairs and maintenance software, mobile workforce software solutions or machine learning analytics tool to predict future work, ROCC’s suite of services can help you improve your repairs and maintenance service and boost your RFT scores.