Member Article

Loreburn Housing Association Saves Time and Money Thanks To Remote Technology

Loreburn Housing Association, a Social Landlord providing more than 2,500 homes across Dumfries and Galloway, recently evaluated GUARDIAN® remote technology via an affordable pilot scheme offered by Durham based Plexus Innovation.

Impressed with the demonstration of manpower and financial savings, Loreburn now plan to implement the technology, designed and manufactured by Plexus Innovation in the UK, a portfolio of 26 of its critical schemes.

Loreburn decided to carry out a serious evaluation of GUARDIAN® remote technology to try and resolve a number of business critical issues it faced:

• It relied heavily on supported property tenants allowing monthly access to personal space to carry out manual temperature checks and flushing. Historically, but magnified throughout the period of Covid 19 restrictions, this was recognised as potentially problematic, leading to possible data loss, lack of compliance readings and wasted manpower. • The enabling of a more proactive and preventative maintenance programme.

Plexus Innovation installed GUARDIAN® at a supported accommodation site to provide real time, remote measurement of all assets across a 12 week period. As part of this easily affordable program, training was provided to the Loreburn team regarding use of the dashboard, configuring of reports and setting critical alerts that met their specific requirements.

Managing director and co-founder of Plexus Innovation, Ian Murray said:

“Providing an affordable means of GUARDIAN® evaluation to potential new clients enables benefits to be demonstrated and a business case developed, without any long term commitment. In the case of Loreburn, it enabled generation of automated, scheduled compliance reports as specified by the Loreburn compliance team. This provided data driven insight, enabling the team to make informed decisions regarding manual flushing requirements and receive alerts highlighting failing assets or critical issues that they wouldn’t otherwise know about.

“Following the initial installation, no further access is required. Once again we have demonstrated significant business benefits and addressed the key client challenges. We are delighted that Loreburn is now implementing GUARDIAN® technology across another further 26 sites and our team looks forward to supporting them for a long time to come!”

Pilot results are impressive, with five days per month in administration manpower saved by Loreburn. A range of alerts were triggered highlighting potential scald risks, caused by failing TMVs and even the discovery of assets incorrectly plumbed.

When implemented across the 26 critical sites planned next, 100% improvement in identification of faulty assets will be achieved, enabling insight driven decisions to be made regarding repairs and planned maintenance. Additionally 60 days a year will be saved in administration manpower.

Loreburn plans to implement its Phase 2 GUARDIAN® program during May 2022 which involves installing these devices to all communal area water outlets.

Murron Bisset, team manager for cyclical compliance, said:

“We have not only saved team manpower, we have also saved money, by not having to have a third party contractor attend our site monthly for flushing. As well as contributing to our Net Zero focus, this allows us to pass savings onto our customers. Excitingly we have just had our first week with zero need to flush water outlets such as taps within the development as they had been adequately flushed through normal usage!”

Loreburn Housing Association is a registered social landlord providing more than 2,500 homes across Dumfries and Galloway.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Anna Toms .