Harvest Housing Group has announced a new, innovative repairs partnering service worth £32 million, which will provide services to customers of Manchester & District Housing Association and Frontis Homes Ltd.

In conjunction with its customer procurement panel Harvest has appointed two new contractors to deliver the service, which will commence on 1 November 2007.

Cruden Property Services has won the £26 million contract to deliver the response maintenance and void property repairs work, while PH Jones will be responsible for gas servicing and breakdown delivery in a contract worth £6 million.

Both contracts are term partnering contracts for 5 years (with an option to extend to 7 years) and include a range of innovations that will bring about a significantly enhanced service to customers of both organisations. These innovations include:

• Service delivery staff jointly employed by both Harvest and the contractor.

• Dedicated Customer Liaison Officers on each contract.

• A full appointments system and extended hours of service.
(8am – 8pm Monday to Friday and 9am – 1pm on Saturdays.)

• The use of a price framework and payment mechanism as part of the open book process.

• Contract performance monitored by a balanced scorecard focusing on 4 key areas:

• customer satisfaction

• costs

• innovations & learning

• internal business processes

The results of the scorecard will link to the potential profit or loss that the contractor can earn.

• Customers will sit on both the Core Group and the Operational Groups which will monitor the service. Customer satisfaction will carry the greatest emphasis on the balanced scorecard.

Harvest customer Alison Piddington, says:

“I believe involving customers in each stage of the process significantly enhanced the project and gave customers a real say in both the design of the future repairs service and selection of the new maintenance partners.

The process gave customers a greater voice in the decision making process and I believe the final outcome will enable real service improvements to be delivered to M&D and Frontis customers.”