Management Consultancy for Housing Associations

Housing associations engage our services to help them:

• Help form, grow and manage maintenance teams or DLOs. DLOs (direct labour organisations) are increasing within the social housing sector as a route to achieve value for money, drive efficiencies and gain control of critical services. Our specific focus is estate management services, including asset management consultancy

• Provide estate services consultancy, audit and benchmarking services. Our estate services audit is third party assessment of your estate services whether in-house maintenance team (DLO and in-sourced) or outsourced. We review people, plant, equipment and biodiversity. It is a chance to assess your performance against your peers, benchmark your costs, prepare for an upcoming procurement exercise or find improvements and efficiencies. This covers all estate services, including grounds maintenance, communal cleaning, graffiti removal, waste management and pest control, for example

• Improve supply chain management and development practices. As a social housing provider it is essential you have an effective supply chain, which also shares your mission and ethics. Sector knowledge, alongside supply chain engagement, monitoring and management expertise, allows us to make significant improvements for our housing association client base. This includes identifying and developing the skills often key local suppliers lack, such as KPI reporting or bidding to ensure they can compete effectively for your contracts and deliver the value you know they can

• Challenge contractor performance through outsourced contract management and support. Historically within the social housing sector this has been an underdeveloped area, with insufficient capacity. As a result of the Procurement Act, and in line with continuous improvement, we are seeing more housing associations invest into contract management. Establishing effective systems, processes and contract management skills are a few of the areas we support our clients with

• Offer procurement support and engagement of suppliers. Auditing and engaging your current suppliers prior to re-tender for estate services, grounds maintenance or communal cleaning, for example. This includes benchmarking and cost implications of improved specifications, stakeholder surveys and engagement ensuring residents have their say. Creating a procurement plan and timeline. Researching the number of bidders from other recent procurement events to understand the likely interest in your contract, as well as framework agreements, as part of our procurement options appraisal. Developing improved specifications, tender documents and pricing schedules

• Plan the journey to net zero, including biodiversity and sustainability best practice. This includes developed estate services or DLO specific carbon reduction plans

• Develop income generation strategies and business plans. Offering commercialisation, business development and social housing bid writing support. Guiding social housing diversification, commercial ventures and enterprise projects.

How to engage our Social Housing Consultancy And Asset Management Services?

As a niche social housing consultancy our projects are largely low value meaning engaging our services is simple, often requiring a single quote.

We are also approved with the following compliant frameworks, which allow direct award:

• CCS
• Procure Assist
• Crescent Purchasing Consortium (CPC).

Contact us by emailing: hello@thorntonandlowe.com