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How smart thermostats are changing the way housing is managed


than you think. For the last few years, Switchee has been steadily working away to make this a reality. Switchee is a smart home solution for housing providers designed specifically to help them maintain properties efficiently and compliantly. To do this we’ve built a smart thermostat that optimises heating settings around residents’ day-to-day lives, reducing energy usage and bills. Overlaying this is a landlord dashboard that analyses information from installed Switchees in order to display live, remote property performance and wellbeing metrics. Often our clients come to us with the same


A


problem: large numbers of properties, often geographically dispersed, with complex repair and maintenance obligations exacerbated by different stock types and incomplete job records. Systems have evolved to cope, but as the pace of technology evolution quickens, a comparative lack of real time insight and data is shining an increasingly bright light on easy efficiency gains many landlords are failing to capture.


smart thermostat in every privately rented and affordable home sounds years away from reality, but we might just be closer


notifications and other maintenance issues that they can then use to plan their work schedule more efficiently. With the insights we provide, our clients are also better equipped to engage in strategic asset management. Utilising the data-based insights and alerts from our dashboard – they are now capable of allocating resources to challenging properties that require attention. We enable housing providers to better protect


With a Switchee installed, a housing provider is


capable of visualising and understanding a property’s individual characteristics on a granular level. We arm you with the digital tools to identify the problem and the information needed to fix it. The dashboard we provide gives you real-time access to mould risk, humidity and temperature statistics, as well as overall portfolio health which includes heating system performance, thermal efficiency and even fuel poverty alerts. Switchee can detect failing insulation, poor


ventilation and a whole host of other systemic problems with a property without the need for a manual inspection. This allows you and your maintenance teams to spend your time fixing problems, not diagnosing them. Switchee therefore enables housing providers to


engage in preventative maintenance rather than reactive maintenance; this can drive efficiency gains and better resident outcomes. We give our clients early warnings about mould, heating system


their tenants with gas safety compliance checks through our occupancy-based appointment scheduling tool. This allows them to book gas safety – or indeed other – visits at times most convenient for residents, thereby reducing no access appointments. With recent government policy placing an


increasing focus on the right of residents both to timely repair and to hold their landlord accountable for maintenance decisions, having objective data to evidence and audit proper repairs and stock investment is increasingly important. Last year’s Green Paper set the framework for accountability; there has been a lot of focus recently on the Fitness for Human Habitation bill and the changes it will bring to landlord standards and residents’ right to claim for disrepair. Switchee provides data-backed evidence on property performance and the effectiveness of retrofit and repair solutions. For tenants, the Switchee Smart Thermostat can


mean the difference between a comfortable home and fuel poverty. Our smart thermostat monitors a property’s heating performance and sets the best heating profile to reduce energy wastage and save residents money (we save residents up to 15 per cent off their heating bill). This benefits both the resident and the environment as for every Switchee


installed, a home will have its CO2 emissions reduced by around 177 kilograms a year. That’s the same as driving for nearly 7 hours non-stop in the average car. The device also isn’t reliant on a residents’ Wi-Fi connection. Its connectivity is over an independent GSM connection - allowing it to work in areas where broadband connectivity doesn’t reach. The screen on the device can also be used to utilise the Switchee messaging service to communicate directly with residents to conduct surveys and post announcements.


For all these reasons and more – our system is


being deployed across more than 40 housing associations and local authorities, including Flagship, Peabody, Optivo and Notting Hill Genesis. As more and more housing associations begin to deploy innovative technological measures to help manage their properties, Smart thermostats are well placed to help deliver an evolution towards strategic, pre-emptive and more efficient maintenance whilst directly benefitting residents.


020 7043 2310 www.switchee.co www.housingmmonline.co.uk | HMM February/March 2019 | 27


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