Ian Hollins, Director at Clear Building Management explains how ‘smart’ technology can reduce expenditure and help managing agents to deliver a better block management experience.

“Successful property management is all about the people.”

This is one of our mantras at Clear but, increasingly, we are seeing the value of backing up excellent customer service with technological solutions that can help us deliver an even better property management service.

Even with a thorough maintenance schedule, building management can naturally be quite reactive: a resident may experience an issue; the boiler breaks; the lift is stuck; there’s a leak, the list goes on.

Good managing agents have strict service standards that mean issues are acknowledged quickly and fixed, and residents reassured that there is someone on hand who cares and has the capability to bring a resolution.

But what if you could anticipate issues before they arose, and put in place planned maintenance at the right time to prevent them?

A proactive approach to identifying potential service issues can save money and, importantly, drive leaseholder satisfaction.

At Clear Building Management we have invested in some of the new generation of smart technologies that provide real-time, granular user data on a development’s critical components such as the lift, the air conditioning, the security system and so forth.

Through remote monitoring we are able to see, for example, the health and status of fire alarm systems, and get statistics on how a lift is being used, so we can anticipate and adjust the service requirements accordingly. 

Anyone who relies on a lift knows the feeling of seeing the “out of service” sign when you have shopping to get home but, with a relatively nominal investment in smart technology (often only a couple of thousand pounds), these incidents can be reduced and reliability improved.

This proactive approach means a better experience for residents and less down-time on critical components in the building. It also helps to minimise emergency call-outs, with remote resets able to be completed in moments, all of which quickly translates into lower maintenance costs.

By effectively deploying smart technologies, we are can ensure that our property management professionals can focus more of their time on what they do best; building strong relationships with leaseholders and tenants and providing a happy and effective communal living solution.