Minster Housing Association – Stock Condition Survey
Faithorn Farrell Timms was asked by Minster Housing Association to undertake a survey of a representative sample of their housing stock. This was geographically diverse with properties located in Cambridgeshire, Northants, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire.
The spread of the stock required precise survey programming, in order to meet the client's deadline for completion, and over 500 surveys had to be undertaken during a six-week period.
In addition to the concentrations of properties in the major conurbations, there were also many outlying rural dwellings to inspect to ensure that all property archetypes were properly represented in the survey sample. The survey data was captured by means of PDA and loaded into the asset management database on a weekly basis.
The inspections were made to assess the condition of the building components, gather valuable information on the energy efficiency of the dwellings and to assess compliance with the Decent Home Standard.
Our client is now further developing a schedule of rates and lifecycles specific to their housing stock, which will be informed by the data we have collected on their behalf. Reports will then be created to assess the adequacy of financial allowances made for stock renewal works.
We are currently providing ongoing consultancy services to develop a cloning strategy for the data, to provide full datasets on schemes for works programming and to rationalise the replacement works so there are no unwanted peaks in expenditure. This follows our client joining The Hyde Group and the requirement for all the data collected to now be fully integrated into a much larger asset management database.