HOUSING
New Ways of WORKING T
by Emma Sloper of DIO
he Defence Infrastructure Organisation exists to support military personnel and their families by
providing, managing and maintaining these places at home and abroad. And now it is on the cusp of change.
DIO was launched in Apr 11, its purpose, to ensure that assets across the MoD estate are fit for the job that needs to be done. Two years on, DIO has launched a new operating model that ties new ways of working to a change in organisational behaviour. Restructuring the organisation will not only streamline and improve processes, but will also bring benefits for users of the military estate.
Our strategic asset-management and programming team focuses on the bigger picture, allowing us to make swifter, clearer and more consistent decisions on prioritising military infrastructure requirements.
But what do DIO’s new ways of working mean for RAF personnel? Let’s take the example of accommodation. DIO has already made great strides in improving the experience of finding a military home.
We launched an improved online service in 2012, which allows personnel entitled to Service Family Accommodation (SFA) to select their housing preferences. This allows users to apply for their next home online. They can look at photos and floor plans of properties available in their posting area, before selecting up to three homes they wish to be considered for. This has made the process faster and more transparent.
In addition, two Housing Allocation Service Centres (HASC), based in Aldershot and Thetford, replaced eight Housing Information Centres across the UK. The HASCs are swift ‘one-stop-shops’ for military families to deal with allocation of SFA.
Freed from the task of inputting paper applications, the HASCs can now provide a faster, more responsive service. Now DIO has awarded a contract to IBM for the implementation and support of our new Infrastructure Management Solution. The new technology will help us to free up time
www.raf-ff.org.uk
for busy military commanders looking to find Single Living Accommodation (SLA) for their personnel by improving the efficiency of booking bed spaces.
Bookings will continue to be controlled locally, but using a single system will help deliver efficiencies in managing SLA across Defence. This will allow us to target investment more accurately, help minimise the use of privately rented properties and where appropriate, identify surplus accommodation.
There will also be changes to the delivery of contracts for facilities management, whether ‘hard’ – maintenance of buildings and assets or ‘soft’ – support services such as catering and cleaning. DIO’s Next Generation of Estates Contract Programme was established to find the best and most cost-effective way of buying in services as current estate contracts expire.
The programme team has completed the assessment phase and has started procuring the six new hard Facility Management contracts – four regional and two national, for housing and the training estate. It will also procure six UK regional frameworks for low-value and non-complex capital works to a maximum of £12 million, with a single national framework for more-complex or higher-value Capital Works up to £50 million.
Across Defence a number of support services are essential to ensuring that life runs as smoothly for Royal Air Force, Royal Navy and Army personnel. These include laundry, retail and leisure, waste management, Mess management and hotel services, tailoring and
cobbling, domestic assistance and business management.
Over the years, the provision of such support services has developed across Defence independently of any central policy. DIO is now working towards rationalising delivery for soft facility management and has formed Project HESTIA to take forward the Land Forces next Generation of soft Facility Management Multi-Activity Contracts.
The project will consider all aspects of more than 200 current soft facility management contracts. Its ultimate aim is to reduce these arrangements down to nine regionally-based contracts to deliver cost-effective support services across UK Defence. These contracts will need to be flexible enough to accommodate future Defence change programmes, but our long-term plan visualises the merging of ‘hard’ with ‘soft’ FM to create ‘Total Facility Managment’ after 2020.
The MoD will be investing around £1.8 billion of additional capital investment between now and 2020 across the UK. This means 13 major infrastructure projects and over 60 minor projects, with around £1 billion of investment into military accommodation. The intent is to provide about 1,900 new family homes along with new accommodation for around 7,800 personnel in Single Living Accommodation.
DIO now has an exciting opportunity to really make a difference to the lives of our Armed Forces colleagues. We look forward to taking up the challenge.
Envoy Summer 2013 31
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