The Shared Works platform will enable Warmer Homes London to deliver London’s flagship retrofit scheme, improving efficiency and customer service.
Novoville is pleased to announce that Shared Works has been selected to support London’s retrofit programme: “Warm Homes: Local Grant”.
The retrofit scheme is delivered by the Mayor of London with the support of Warmer Homes London (WHL). £53.47 million of funding is being distributed to help make private homes in 31 London boroughs more comfortable, healthier and more affordable.
A clearer and more consistent experience for residents
Achieving a high level of customer service across 31 boroughs requires tight coordination with every delivery partners. Retrofit programmes are notoriously disjointed: customers are managed by various organisations throughout their journey, which all create their own data. This information needs to be kept in sync, linked back to the right property, and made available to the right people. Previously, it used to be scattered across many spreadsheets, Share Point folders and databases, but with Shared Works, it is being brought together to deliver a much more joined up approach for residents.
With Shared Works, residents will receive timely information at every step of their journey through the Local Grant programme, helping them understand what will happen to their home and when. Shared Works guarantees a consistent experience regardless of which contractor is delivering the work to their home.
Ben Hebbert, Programme Manager, Warm Homes: Local Grant, the Greater London Authority, said:
“With Shared Works, we are saving ourselves massive headaches while giving residents a better service. Well configured, the platform saves a tremendous amount of time and money. In working with us to make the platform suitable to our needs, Novoville has produced a very flexible system which can support other organisations needing to deliver retrofit schemes at scale.”
One shared dataset for all, and one shared platform if required
Shared Works can provides one environment for all professional stakeholders. Contractors, local councils and the Warm Homes: Local Grant programme team all work from the same place, on the same data, updating the same record.
Scheme managers monitor progress and spend, see where the bottlenecks are, how spend is being disbursed, and monitor overall programme health. Delivery teams upload information, review and approve plans, monitor and respond to queries, and see how things are progressing. To save time, the system automates routine steps such as updating statuses, sending emails, calculating KPIs, generating files, and automatically keeps customers in the loop. Contractors can use Shared Works directly or integrate their existing system via API or batch processing, keeping their information in-sync.
With this, residents can easily log into their customer portal to see the latest updates, learn about their upcoming upgrades, query works, reschedule appointments, etc.
At property level, Shared Works safeguards information about the property, suggested and installed measures, costs, documents, communications and delivery statuses. At scheme-management level, Shared Works consolidates data into one auditable record, providing consistency for financial control, compliance and reporting.
Built for programmes with many moving parts
Asset management programmes in general require several organisations at various levels to work through a common process while retaining clear responsibilities and permissions. Typically, regional authorities are in charge of spending, local authorities control the delivery model, contractors carry out the work, and community groups help individuals through the process on the ground.
Shared Works has been specifically designed to accommodate this reality, with customisable permissions applied to different stakeholders. This makes it well adapted to local authority consortiums or devolved delivery models with many partners, as well contractors with many clients across the region.
To cater to the varied realities of councils and contractors, the platform supports:
- configurable workflows, notifications, resident guidance and FAQs, because one model does not fit all;
- shared property records and structured document storage to keep all files in one place.
- powerful data integrations
- one-click import of RdSAP XML files, IOEs and MTIPs to quickly generate structured data from documents.
- role-based access for residents, assessors, contractors, councils, programme administrators and clerks of works, to make sure only the right people can see and action data.
- KPI dashboards, custom reporting and powerful export functions to keep track of progress and further analyse data;
- case messaging and complaints management, for responsive customer support.
Louis Daillencourt, Head of Housing and Energy, Novoville, said:
“At this scale, the central challenge for our clients is complex coordination, but residents deserve a clear and consistent service regardless of the organisational challenges behind the scenes. Shared Works relieves this pressure on programme teams and delivery partners by providing them with a common but customisable structure for managing each home, and the programme as a whole. This also saves public administrations and their business partners a lot of time and money in the process.”
Early Results
After just two months of beta testing, 65% of residents who applied to the Warm Homes: Local Grant programme have created a Shared Works account. Eligibility checks are being processed far more quickly, to the point that approved homes are entering the pipeline faster than contractors can work through them. We will share an update once we have a few more months of data.
