Estate Services Audits - Procurement Preparation
As part of our highly success estate services audits, we often work with housing associations to help them prepare for a procurement exercise. The comprehensive audit of your existing estate services, grounds maintenance and cleaning services identify areas for improvement and cost savings.
For many Housing Associations, their grounds maintenance and cleaning services, as well as repairs, are critical elements in ensuring resident satisfaction. For this reason, Thornton & Lowe offers Estate Service Audits. Our experienced auditor will analyse the full service, from specification, site visits, commercials, supplier interviews and resident and service user satisfaction surveys. Not only do these audits provide a tool to independently verify your grounds maintenance performance, along with improvement actions, they can also identify quick wins, potential problems ahead of time and a chance to reassess and develop the service. This can be a vital tool in contract management, as well as a starting point for the next procurement exercise.
Continually assessing the delivery as it happens allows for a flawless service delivery whilst at the same time identifying training gaps within the team. It’s also a great opportunity to monitor compliance and health and safety, both for team members but also the general public.
Issues that get highlighted in these audits can have a large bearing on the customer experience but include points such as:
- Quality of work
- Missed items from the specification
- Missed areas of the site
- Quality of the finish
- Health and Safety
- Contract and wider compliance
- Security
- Interaction with the residents or general public
- Environmental issues
- Training opportunities
- Brand and appearance - how the team are perceived
It’s also an opportunity to collect feedback from residents, asses if the specification is still 100% relevant, check site plans, and collate ideas and future proposals to improve. Undertaking regular independent audits and recording this data demonstrates a high level of commitment to quality and value for money. It also provides a route to consistently monitor whether you are receiving the service and social value which has been promised in the bid.
Auditing contracts prior to contract start and then at regular intervals also gives the client a benchmark and KPIs, as well as demonstrating continuous improvement.
