This lack of consistency is caused by a number of factors but primarily the following:
• The skills shortage due to the lack of investment in training over the last 25 years.
• An ignorance of the opportunities that good diversity and equalities promotion can create a better workforce/workplace.
• Tendering designed to suit outdated audit practises and the use of inflexible schedule of rates contracts that cause vast wastage,
great conflict and lack of quality in service delivery.
• The lack of integrated IT systems that allow the flow of electronic information (too many clients still post job tickets to their
contractors).
• Some clients lack the technical ability and confidence to enter into true open-book partnered relationships with contractors previously not trusted.
• Contractors exploiting rather than complementing the shortage of technical expertise in HA client departments.
• First past the post mentality in selecting contractor partners.
• No recognition of the need for contractors needs to generate profits.
• Failing to recognise that we have all been slow to adopt change.
This has created an environment that lacks customer focus, is extremely inefficient, promotes distrust and is therefore in urgent need of realignment.
Maintenance contractors expend some £3bn per year on behalf of their clients, in the past this has been spent in isolation by individual organisations regardless of shared geography and, in some instances, under different contracts by internal departments of the same body. The introduction of Best Value, Egan, Latham, Decent Homes and the recent Efficiency Agenda has changed the market place in this respect and clients are now recognising the need to coordinate their asset management strategies.
The Forum’s intention is to address these issues whilst actively promoting quality over price in an open-book partnered environment that ensures both probity for the client and security for the contractor. To this end we have drafted a Constitution, appointed Officers, created a Code of Conduct for members and set out our Aims and Objectives in a welcome pack available to interested contractors.
The HMCF has been established to provide a focal point for the development of maintenance into asset management and to allow our members to develop and circulate best practice in response to client and government led initiatives. We will engender this in an open environment developed through trust and success. We intend to offer our expertise to, and mentor, smaller firms and those companies which are managed by people who have been previously ignored or under represented in this sector. We will look to include all such firms in our membership or work with organisations which represent them.
Whilst the original eight founder members are either medium or large contractors our intention via an attractive membership fee is to encourage these small yet vitally important contractors into membership.
In our first year we hope to develop our membership to number 500 companies and associates such as clients and consultants representing a broad spectrum of the sector, to develop a professional syllabus for training multi trade operatives, to promote equality and diversity in maintenance, to promote a positive image to pupils in fulltime education that this is a viable career option, to develop a national standard for selecting and employing your maintenance contractor and then to hand the body over to a representative committee of members to further develop our aims.
For the first time maintenance contractors will have a united voice with which to lobby Central Government, the Housing Corporation, the National Housing Federation, Health and Safety Executive and the CITB in order to further raise the profile of maintenance.
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