One Housing Group – Condition Surveys
One Housing Group (formed by the merger of Community Housing Association, Toynbee Housing Association and Island Homes) appointed Faithorn Farrell Timms to undertake approximately 1500 condition surveys of their existing stock held throughout London and Berkshire.
The surveys were carried out in three separate batches of approximately 500 property inspections. The first batch was completed in November 2007, following a seven week site survey programme.
The condition data is required to further populate their asset management system (ECMK's Integrator) and improve the accuracy of extrapolation routines for the production of reports. Data is also required to be captured for the Toynbee and Island housing stock in a format consistent with that already held for Community, so that reports can be created on a Group wide basis.
Survey data was captured with PDAs loaded with ECMK's Pocket Surveyor. The data was uploaded into a stand alone version of the asset management database, Integrator, then validated and analysed by our own Survey Manager.
To increase efficiency within the management of the survey, we are making use of remote data uploading via Secure Digital (SD) cards, which negates the need for surveyors to travel from site back to the office for uploads from the PDAs.
As a result, we have experienced extremely high survey returns as the surveyors' downtime for the week is reduced. This is often important when the properties to be inspected are a significant distance from our offices.