Places For People Selects Wheatley Associates to Manage its Housing Maintenance Scheduling across the UK

Leading UK Housing Association boosts field force efficiency with innovative appointment booking, scheduling and asset management software

Ipswich, UK – 1st June 2005 – Wheatley Associates, Europe’s No.1 provider of field force scheduling solutions, has been selected to provide its innovative, real-time GRASP scheduling solution to over 250 maintenance operatives of Places for People, one of the UK’s leading housing & regeneration providers. GRASP automatically books and manages maintenance and repair appointments, ensuring mobile workers arrive at site on time and complete more jobs per day. Its adoption significantly reduces field force costs and improves service levels through more efficient resource scheduling.

Places for People develops and maintains over 55,000 homes across the UK, ranging from flats for single and elderly people, to houses and bungalows for families. GRASP will enable Places for People to track and maximise the productivity of their maintenance workforce through an internet-based system that dispatches the right operative and equipment needed for each particular job. GRASP also automatically re-schedules workloads when changes to the working day occur because of emergency repairs, employee illness, or jobs requiring additional workers. GRASP is available as an ‘off-the-shelf’ ASP-based service, where Housing Associations pay a fixed monthly fee to cost-effectively ‘rent’ the software.

“Our aim is to enhance our customers’ quality of life by developing and maintaining housing that meets their diverse needs," said Dennis Evans, Director, Places for People Group. “Wheatley’s GRASP solution addresses our need to effectively coordinate housing repairs and communicate appointment updates in real-time so that residents can enjoy the benefits of living in a well maintained and safe environment."

“Housing associations and local authorities are faced with many demands on a day-to-day basis and must deliver services efficiently while operating within set budgets,” added John Wheatley, Managing Director of Wheatley Associates. “GRASP provides Places for People an easy to manage and cost-effective system for booking appointments and ensuring maintenance workers arrive on-time with the proper equipment for each job. Our aim is for GRASP to become the defacto standard for all Housing Associations in the UK.”

About Places for People

The Places for People Group is one of the UK’s leading housing and regeneration specialists and is responsible for more than 55,000 homes in England, Scotland and Wales. The Places for People Group provides a range of regeneration solutions, from large scale master planning to new build programmes. With its own commercial arm, housing management expertise and a strong rack record of community consultation, it offers a one-stop approach for local authorities as well as public and private partners. For more information visit www.placesforpeople.co.uk