North Lanarkshire Repairs & Maintenance

Contract: North Lanarkshire Council
Service: Maintenance and Property Care Joint Venture (MPC) - Planned & responsive maintenance to 48,000 council houses and 2,000 public buildings, including capital works planning and life cycle replacement project execution to the Council’s primary and secondary schools, libraries and commercial buildings.
Total Contract Value: £25-30M per annum
Service Stream Value: £18M per annum
Commencement Date: 2001
Contract Term: 10 years

Working in a Collaborative Way

Morrison are engaged in Scotland’s first PPP arrangement in the facilities managment, repairs and maintenance arena. This partnership with North Lanarkshire Council resulted in the creation of an innovative joint venture company (JVC) called Maintenance and Property Care Limited (MPC).

690 members of the Council’s DLO transferred to the JVC under TUPE regulations.

The JVC’s turnover has risen from £26M to £30M of which 75% is derived from services delivered to the Council housing estate including:

• Planned and Responsive Maintenance
• Voids Maintenance
• Housing refurbishment programmes
• Provision of Out of Hours Call Centre

Up to £6.5 million of the JVC’s turnover is generated through the delivery of maintenance and capital works services to the Council’s 2000 public buildings. 120 members of our service delivery organisation are dedicated to this aspect of the words with 11 members of our management team engaged in administration.

In 2005 MPC won the Premises and Facilities Management award for being the UK’s most effective PPP in the maintenance and facilities management sector.

The structure below provides an illustration of the JVC.

Partnership Structure

Service Delivery Solution

Upon formation of the JVC, we provided immediate capital funding for investment in training and service delivery infrastructure. We engaged in a significant service reengineering exercise, leading to a number service delivery streamlining initiatives. Organisational structures and role definitions of management staff were modified and a significant training programme was initiated to support skills development and the creation of a modern apprenticeship scheme. As a result, the MPC operational team is better structured, better trained and equipped with the wide range of skills required to deliver a modern highly responsive maintenance service. As well as technical skills MPC has emphasised the importance of the customer relationship and train all staff in effective customer care. This is a vital aspect of a repairs and maintenance service that has such a close working relationship with its customer, tenants and building users.

Services are delivered from three hubs within the Council’s boundaries, these had previously been formed as regional depots but as part of the re-engineering exercise each depot has become dedicated to functional specialisms. This has enabled MPC to create centres of excellence for specialist trades and means that economies of scale in production and service delivery can be more easily captured.

Delivering Value and Improving Tenant Satisfaction

Service delivery is measured against 6 KPI’s, including measures for budget management, maintenance planning and compliance with response times. The JVC’s Partnering Board sets performance targets to be achieved; currently set at an overall performance score of 90%. MPC has met all its performance targets and is currently on target to achieve an overall score of 94%.

The cost reimbursement system for works is based on a contractual schedule of rates with fixed preliminaries for management and overheads. The contract provides a guaranteed minimum volume of works set at £24 million. This means MPC accepts a significant volume risk before prices and preliminaries can be renegotiated.

The partnering arrangement has enabled the Council to service its housing stock at fixed unit rates, whilst the size of the stock has reduced from 48,000 to 42,000.

In essence, repairs and maintenance has become a highly variable cost to the Council when it would have traditionally been regarded as a fixed cost.

Profits are declared on an open book basis and special dividend is paid to the Council when MPC makes excess profits.

Contributing to Neighbourhood Renewal

MPC has an excellent reputation as an employer. The transfer of 690 staff from the Council under TUPE is considered by all parties to have been very successful and has extended the career development possibilities for all staff. MPC is therefore used as a reference site to demonstrate our ability to manage staff transfers and continued staff development.

The partnering ethos adopted between Morrison and the Council is extended to MPC’s relationship with the Union of Construction, Alliance Trades and Technicians (UCATT).

MPC invests in training and staff development and has opened a Learning Suite, providing IT training facilities to staff and their immediate families. This facility was jointly funded by MPC and UCATT.

MPC is committed to the employment and training of local people and its apprenticeship scheme forms an important feature of its recruitment strategy. The company employs a minimum of 40 apprentices at any one time. It is our recruitment of local people combined with an emphasis on the delivery of responsive maintenance service focussed on the customer that enables MPC to contribute to the vision for neighbourhood renewal.