Maintenance Specialist

Job Overview

The Maintenance Surveyor position at CRA GROUP LIMITED offers an exciting opportunity to join our team and contribute to delivering high-quality maintenance services.

About the Role

This role involves ensuring that all temporary accommodation owned and managed properties are maintained to the highest possible standards, meeting statutory and regulatory requirements. You will be responsible for managing your own caseload, applying relevant legislation, and providing a high standard of service to staff, residents, and property owners.

Main Responsibilities

• Carry out site investigations of technical matters and prepare specifications, works programs, detailed reports, and correspondence to address problems, including damp inspections, structural inspection, insurance claim inspections, disrepair inspections, health and safety estate inspections.
• Manage repairs & maintenance work to ensure all site operations are undertaken professionally, provide technical advice and expertise to non-technical staff, clients, and residents.
• Undertake pre-inspection of repair issues ordered through the customer contact centre, directly by clients or reference from contractors, ensure appointments for this work are met, produce clear specifications of work (and where necessary written reports) utilising the agreed pricing mechanism for the contract or service level agreement in sufficient detail to avoid the need for further pre-work visits.
• Conduct surveys of void properties at various stages according to current procedure, ensure void properties are repaired and maintained in accordance with the voids standard, ensure void turnaround is completed within or better than target, implement processes that improve the voids turnaround times within repairs.
• Complete final inspections of voids and produce RBK's Habitable Certificate document, where jobs will require a multi-trade/task input, provide the contractor with appropriate information to ensure a seamless service for the resident and manage the works through to satisfactory completion, ensuring that residents are advised of all aspects of the process.
• Review cost and time variations in accordance with current procedure, complete post-inspections as per RBK's current procedure, ensure statutory obligations are met by ensuring specifications for work take into account the Council's statutory obligations in relation to fire risk control of legionella, asbestos, gas, electrics, lifts, fire protection, CDM, and estates safety.
• Makes full and appropriate use of IT to ensure best use of time achieve best value outcomes, ensuring you are familiar and competent with using the systems and programmes in place, provide support and guidance to operatives during the course of work so that correct outcomes are achieved first time, they may entail on-site inspections as well as telephone and electronic communications.
• Respond to queries from tenants, landlords, internal and external clients within prescribed timescales, brief and notify senior staff of any contractual disputes occurring involving building contracts, property leases, land ownership, and disrepair in rented accommodation, assist with the Investigation and preparation of responses to formal and informal complaints, Councillor Enquiries, MP enquiries & Freedom of Information requests.
• Report to the management team on the performance of supply chain contractors, consultants, and suppliers of goods and services, ensure repairs & maintenance costs are controlled, and any significant item values are reported to the management team, ensure works are procured in accordance with standing orders and financial regulations, and contract documents for all projects meet professional standards.
• Ensure that the damp, structural, and disrepair investigation process is implemented such that the Council's liability is minimised, ensure applicable H&S regulations are applied in all aspects of the responsibilities held, challenge conventional local government approaches to enable the organisation to drive greater efficiency and effectiveness through the development of best practices and innovative commissioning contracting market development and resource management.
• Undertake any other duties consistent with the purpose of the post, continually monitor performance against targets and communicate this to others, develop a continuous improvement ethos and implement tasks and actions that deliver such improvements, develop update and act on own personal development plan and share learning with others.
• Work in accordance with RBK's Equal Opportunities, Health & Safety, and all relevant policies and legislation, undertake any other duties commensurate with the grade of the post as may be required from time to time, including attending meetings outside of normal working hours, as well as any other tasks which help support the team to provide service which will be relevant to their skillset.

Required Skills and Qualifications

• Evidence of continued professional and personal development, determination to provide a high-quality service, ability to make a major contribution to key projects, good level of professional knowledge and expertise in planned and responsive maintenance, strong technical ability and knowledge of housing, proven track record in the diagnosis of causes of damp and mould and specifying remedial works.
• Able to play a key role in contributing to the annual plans and improvements in service delivery, understanding of housing repairs and construction, party wall and health and safety legislation, knowledge of best practice and innovation in the housing maintenance, particularly in the social housing sector, experience of dealing with people in a customer-facing environment.
• An understanding of the details within Landlord statutory duties for compliance relating to housing, experience of monitoring work undertaken by external contractors, able to think clearly and strategically and find solutions to problems and make decisions based on sound judgements, systematic in approach to work, able to plan and consistently complete many site inspections.
• Able to chair meetings effectively: plans, prepares, listens, encourages participation and ensures clear decisions taken, clearly recorded with action allocated, able to manage budgets, able to analyse, evaluate, revise, develop and apply schedules of rates.
• An understanding of efficiency and value for money and an ability to secure these outcomes while delivering service improvement, able and enthusiastic at using information technology to develop and manage the service, including an ability to utilise response maintenance IT software and applications, and an ability to participate in further IT maintenance developments and support others in its use.
• Excellent knowledge of domestic building technology with the ability to use this to identify problems and their causes and develop innovative solutions in a cost-efficient and effective manner, able to undertake site investigations of complex technical matters (as listed below but not limited to) and prepare specifications, works programs, detailed reports and appropriate correspondence to address the problems.
• Possess a clean driving licence and have access to a vehicle as travelling throughout the borough will be a requirement, be able to ascend ladders and access scaffolding, understanding of the role and purpose of the service within a local authority, understanding of the external influences on the organisation and how they relate to the role, knowledge of the vision and strategic goals of the organisation and relevant service areas.
• Knowledge of building contracts including TPC 2005 and other contract iterations, recognise the need to continually learn and adapt, willingly share knowledge and learning with others, work collaboratively across teams, services, and partner organisations, looks for ways of improving what we do and how we do it, comfortable with new technology and modern methods of working, determined to make a difference to our customers.
• Go out of your way to get it right first time, listen, understand and deliver, respond positively and politely, respect each customer as an individual, take responsibility for the customer's issue or problem, work as a team to deliver the solution, work flexibly and be prepared to take on other appropriate reasonable duties should the Asset Management service require it.