The Impact of the Smart Home on Property Maintenance
Darren Waitson
We help property managers achieve three important outcomes. Compliant buildings, well presented properties and reduced costs. If you'd like to know more, please contact me.
In this digital age, we are no strangers to smart devices. They have made their way into our homes, our businesses, our lives in general and many of us cannot live without them. This integration will not be slowing down any time soon.
Smart home technology ranges from having an Alexa or similar to bark commands at, to having the ability to control lighting, heating and security from your phone, anywhere in the world. Even without integrated smart technology, our homes are more connected than they have ever been.
The average apartment with a family living in it will likely have the majority of the following:
- Smart energy metre
- At least two smartphones
- At least two tablets
- A laptop or two
- An Echo or Echo Dot
- Bluetooth speaker systems
- Smart televisions
On top of that list, more and more home owners are installing smart doorbells, security systems and home control systems.
Most residential blocks are at least ten years old and weren’t built with such technology in mind. This is creating several challenges for property managers, with electrical systems being overloaded, which is increasing the need for more regular maintenance and testing. It also arguably increases the risk of fire with more devices constantly plugged in to a network not designed for such heavy usage.
The rise of PropTech (property technology) though should not be seen as something negative. For property managers and their maintenance team, the new innovations coming forward need to be embraced to help change the way we work with residents and other service providers. A block of connected homes and residents enables much greater levels of communication. Block management apps are not a new thing, but as more and more people become comfortable with managing their homes through their phones, so too will they be more open to helping property managers maintain their blocks in the same way.
Imagine a scenario where a resident says, “Alexa, report a blocked pipe” and immediately their home system talks to the property maintenance system, automatically books an appointment with the maintenance team - that is tallied to the residents own diary on their smartphone to make sure it is convenient. Within seconds, Alexa replies with, “an appointment has been booked for Monday at 11am”, and the appointment is entered in to the diaries of the resident, property manager and maintenance team.
As new blocks are being built with a greater level of technology installed as standard, the opportunities for greater cohesiveness with property maintenance and management is huge. Artificial Intelligence can be used to create an understanding of how a property is being used through motion, heat and sound sensors. This, combined with smart meters and other monitoring tools, can feed in to property maintenance plans to increase their efficiency.
Security can also be massively enhanced through the use of smart technology. Fingerprint and facial recognition remove the need for electronic door fobs, which can easily get lost and create a potential security risk.
Smart technology is designed to make people’s lives more convenient. It is clear there can be ways in which it can streamline property maintenance processes. For it to truly be a useful tool though, it needs block managers and residents to embrace it, and maintenance teams to be on top of the training needed to understand the technology itself.
I am Darren Waitson; CEO and Founder at Nirvana. We are a property maintenance company offering both reactive and preventative maintenance within the flat living sector. Our services include fire defence, electrical, mechanical and general maintenance.