Case Study: Inspace Partnerships

Inspace plc is a fast growing £140 million support services group offering a comprehensive range of property based services nationwide. Inspace's social housing division, called Inspace Partnerships, delivers new build housing, stock maintenance and reinvestment services to Local Authorities, Arms Length Management Organisations (ALMOs), Housing Associations and their tenants.

Inspace Partnerships sought a service management solution which could be used as a model and 'rolled-out' to each of their projects, delivering the highest-standard of service to their clients. Flexibility was a key issue, however, as it was predicted at the outset that each new client would make different demands on Inspace and, in turn, on the system responsible for delivering vital KPI reports. The system would include the use of integrated mobile data technology to communicate with operatives in the field.

Recognising the extent of Inspace's requirement and the sector in which they operate, we decided their needs could be best served by a ViXEN solution, our integrated building services system.

Richard Baxter, Head of IT at Inspace plc, cited our use of proven programming languages and reliable operating system platforms (in this instance, HP-UX) as a primary factor in choosing Vixensoft to supply a solution. He added, “We place the greatest importance upon deliveries that do not impact upon our clients' business, and believe that Vixensoft shares that philosophy.”

“The system is very flexible and allows us to monitor performance accurately and simply in a very visual format, with reports developed to suit each of our clients. Operationally and financially we believe that ViXEN offers a robust and reliable platform for our business and our customers”.

The Inspace/ViXEN system has been designed to work as a universal template, to be ‘rolled-out’ to each new partnership. Combining ViXEN’s high industry-specific functionality and Inspace’s experience-driven approach to modular or branch implementation, use of the template speeds installation and maximises productivity and measurable performance improvement from day one.

The template includes both on-ViXEN call-taking and/or interfaces to-and-from the stock-managers’ existing housing/rental systems (Orchard, Academy, Sx3, etc, & proprietary systems) to ViXEN’s reactive repairs and planned maintenance modules.

Sophisticated scheduling and appointment facilities and real-time remote communications to field-operatives’ PDAs provide up-to-the-minute data and feedback on access, communications needs, completed jobs, follow-ons, and forms
completion (inspections etc). In turn, this data affords instant updating of assets, full costing, materials acquisition, accounting and payroll modules and a range of reporting options for KPI and SLA monitoring and performance/budgetary controls.

• Corporation of London
• Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council
• London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham
• Richmond-upon-Thames Churches Housing Trust
• Trent & Dove Housing Ltd.

Inspace won the contract to deliver planned cyclical maintenance to a quarter of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets for 3 ½ years. The quantifiable improvements which followed implementation of the ViXEN/Inspace system, and notable reduction of average job cost, encouraged Tower Hamlets to extended the contract period by a further two years.

Inspace’s ground-breaking housing stock maintenance project with Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council gained first prize in the Institute of Maintenance and Building Management (IMBM) Awards for its 'Innovative Procurement in Housing Repairs', and has helped Barnsley Council to achieve 'Beacon' status for Rethinking Construction.

“Software failures are very rare and in the past two years the only major system interruptions have been due to network failures. The system is able to recover from infrastructure failures with little or no supplier intervention”, noted Richard Baxter.

For more information on our continued work with Inspace Partnerships please email