Building better efficiency for Together Housing Group

Reallies member Together Housing formed from five separate housing associations with properties spanning 11,000 sq miles. With such a large area and many different specifications to cover it was essential to have the kind of collaborative and flexible service that Reallies provides.

Using the Planned Maintenance Labour and Materials Framework, Reallies worked with Together Housing to produce a group wide specification, ensuring best available market prices were obtained from day one and that ongoing maintenance was optimally efficient by reducing the number of parts that needed to be carried by maintenance teams.

Work is continuously being done to identify further efficiencies in specification and to build longer term call off relationships with contractors to reduce the preliminaries associated with works. This is facilitated thanks to Reallies Schemes Plus purchasing system, which makes data management across the entire group easy, so improvements can be identified and delivered quickly.

Derek Conway, Framework Leader at Together Housing said: “Using Reallies Merchants and Responsive Materials Framework we were able to implement a managed stores and van stock replenishment solution using local small to medium suppliers. This helped us move to a fully delivered service, saving over 1,200 hours of maintenance time that would otherwise be spent collecting materials. Our technicians can now be at their first job by 8.00 am, knowing the supplies they need will be delivered direct to them every day. Our performance has increased year-on-year with Reallies.”

When four new build projects had been stalling for years due to difficult technical issues, Together Housing called on Reallies for support from its specialist pre-construction experts on the New Build Framework, turning them around into viable projects with builders onsite within six months.