Ealing Homes

Ealing Homes also works in partnership with Ealing Council to provide other services. Ealing Homes is run by an independent board of directors but Ealing Council is its only shareholder and remains the landlord of the homes.

Ealing Homes has responsibility for:

• Housing and estate management
• Rent collection and arrears management
• Responsive repairs and maintenance
• Planned repairs and major works
• Leasehold management
• Resident participation
• Management of non residential assets

  The Problem

As the ALMO for Ealing’s tenancy properties, Ealing Homes has responsibility for all maintenance and electrical works which includes heating systems in housing blocks as well as secure door entry systems and vital lift maintenance.

While there were telemetry systems in place to gather data in all three of these operational areas there were some drawbacks to the systems being used.Despite there being an electronic key fob door access system in place which used RF tags on the fobs, there was nonetheless a significant Antisocial behavior problem on the estate manifesting in muggings and wanton criminal damage.

This was caused by lack of key fob management tools,no ability for door access zoning with area restrictions and inefficient engineering visits to setup and maintain door access units. As each of 400 housing units could use several door access units this represented a significant drain on engineering resource, further compounded by the requirement for a door access control PC in each building.

In addition to all of this was the cost of the landlines used to transmit the door access activity information.

The heating plants for the larger tenancy properties and tower blocks had legacy telemetry systems that were under utilized and inefficient.

Clearly it is vital for the elderly, infirm and disabled that lifts are reliable and work but should there be a problem with a lift they are repaired and brought back to full operation as soon as possible. Even the able bodied are affected by this as who wants to carry heavy shopping up several flights of stairs? Lifts also make use of telemetry with performance tolerance levels beyond which alarms will be triggered. Using this information, it is possible to infer people’s behavior; if a lift door is jammed open for 10 to 15 minutes it may well be that a burglary is underway and swift action to assess such alarms could thwart a devastating and life affecting robbery.

And of course there’s nothing more alarming than being stuck in a lift only to find that the emergency telephone doesn’t work. Ultimately the weaknesses in the telemetry alarms and other data capture for lift systems, heating systems and door access control systems were primarily caused by the expense and inflexibility of landlines. With over 400 buildings and multiple systems within each building, the cost of these landlines was becoming prohibitive.

The Solution

Freedom was asked to provide a solution. We used consultative approach that provided clarity of the “Machine to Machine” (M2M) market and explained the capabilities of the technologies, mapping specific benefits to Ealing Homes’ business.

We worked closely with Ealing Homes’ Mechanical & Electrical (M&E) teams to design and implement a solution for all three of the areas affected, door access control, heating systems and lifts. We provided a business case based on ROI calculations to the Board so that they could make the appropriate management decisions, and we provided a roadmap for future enhancements to the initial solution we were proposing.

We proposed that the door access control units use wireless communications to transmit the door alarm data, instead of wirelines. By using “GSM CSD-enabled SIMS” in the door access control units we were able to significantly reduce, if not eliminate, the dependency on expensive and inflexible landlines.

This also provided the central management systems with much better control and command of door key fobs and door entry zones.

The consultative approach also led to a review of heating system controls. Due to the inefficient use of landlines, the fact than many of the telemetry levels and thresholds were either incorrectly set or not set at all had gone unnoticed. GSM CSD-enables SIMS were also implemented here which in turn led to much more efficient and effective management of heating systems which had a direct affect on the quality of life experience by Ealing residents.

Once the benefits of wireless communications was clearly understood, this technology was deployed to solve the previously intractable problem of unreliable lifts. Once again GSM CSD-enables SIMS were deployed with more proactive and responsive lift management being the result.

Benefits Experienced

For the CEO this solution has meant Ealing Homes are much better able to meet their targets for reduction of Anti-Social Behavior and to increase the residents’ security and general quality of life. In these times of constrained budgets, Ealing Homes can demonstrate that by investing in innovation they are offering cost effective solutions and have shown a path to other Housing Management companies and Councils as to how they too can benefit from leadership in innovation.

The Finance Director can demonstrate that this investment has directly led to a reduction of 65% of landline telemetry communications costs, money that can be better utilised for further improvements in housing stock. Ealing Homes has much tighter controls of assets, more efficient spend on engineering resource and a reduction in legal costs as a result of the reduction in Anti-Social Behavior.

The IT team now has the following systems and processes in place:

• Lifts
  • Remote diagnostics
  • Faster response
  • More control
• Heating
  • Remote diagnostics
  • Better green credentials
  • Better use of heating resources
• Door access control
  • Centralised management
  • Zoning for area management
  • Lost fob management
  • Remote diagnostics

The residents of Ealing Homes properties have benefitted from a reduction in antisocial behavior that has led to increased security, peace of mind, improved living areas and better quality of life. They enjoy proactive responses to problems and heating systems which work.