Case study·Build-to-rent

Maintenance exception cockpit

From a scattered repairs inbox — to a governable cockpit of maintenance exceptions

29%
Overdue jobs reductionAcross the five pilot assets vs the 90-day baseline
“The cockpit made maintenance feel governable across sites.”
Regional Manager · BTR multifamily operator
UK BTR / multifamily operator·1,500 units across 5 pilot assets·6-week pilot·United Kingdom
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01Pilot envelope
Pilot length6 weeks
First signal7 days
First ROI42 days
Team alongside5 seats · 3 colleagues

6-week deployment; integrated work orders, resident updates and contractor statuses; exception rules agreed with site and regional managers. The Co-ordinator ran the cockpit read-only against 90 days of historical work orders, then graduated to approval-gated chases and resident update drafts owned by site leads.

02What it owns
Reports toRegional Operations Manager, with a dotted line to the Resident Support Lead on resident-facing drafts.
Owns
  • Daily maintenance cockpit — every overdue or at-risk job with site, trade, contractor, age and named owner by 8am
  • Exception rules — codified definitions of overdue, at-risk and stale, agreed with site and regional managers
  • Contractor chase log — single shared record of who chased which contractor when, with SLA breach flags
  • Resident update drafts — pre-written updates queued for resident-support review whenever a job changes status
  • Weekly review pack — overdue trend by site and contractor, source-linked to the underlying jobs
Does not do
  • Job dispatch or trade scheduling — site leads and contractor managers retain dispatch decisions
  • Sending resident messages — drafts only, resident support reviews and sends every outbound
  • Contractor performance decisions — surfaces breaches; the contractor manager owns the conversation
Done looks like

Regional and site managers open the same cockpit and see the same overdue list, with named owners and a shared chase log. Resident updates land before residents ask, and the weekly review starts on the jobs themselves rather than on what the number means.

03The team
AI teammates3
SofiaReads RealPage and the contractor portal, reconciles work-order status against agreed exception rules, and surfaces overdue jobs by site, trade and contractor each morning.
MarcusDrafts contractor chase messages against the agreed SLA, keeps a single shared chase log, and escalates repeat breaches to the contractor manager for approval.
HannaPre-drafts resident updates from the live job status, flags update gaps over agreed thresholds, and queues messages for resident-support staff to review and send.
Human team5
  • Regional Operations ManagerOperations
  • 5 Site leadsOperations
  • 8 Maintenance techniciansMaintenance
  • 4 Contractor managersContractors
  • 2 Resident supportResident Services
04Connected stack
RealPageContractor portalResident appOutlookMicrosoft TeamsPower BI
05What it returned
29%Overdue jobs reductionAcross the five pilot assets vs the 90-day baseline
63%Resident update lag reductionMedian time from status change to resident-facing update
78%Repeat chase emails removedDuplicate contractor chases on the same job, vs baseline
  • Day 0
    Co-ordinator sessionRegional Operations Manager, site leads and contractor managers align on exception rules, SLA thresholds and the first three answerable questions.
  • Day 7
    First signalSofia completes a read-only pass over 90 days of RealPage and contractor portal history; the overdue and stale-status backlogs are sized for the first time.
  • Day 14
    Read-only cockpit liveDaily cockpit lands in Teams; site leads correct two trade categorisations and one overdue threshold.
  • Day 24
    Approval-gated chasingMarcus drafts contractor chases against the shared log; contractor managers review and approve every escalation.
  • Day 35
    Resident drafts liveHanna queues resident update drafts on every status change; resident support reviews and sends each message.
  • Day 42
    ROI reviewSponsor signs off the three baseline metrics and approves the cockpit as the standing source for the regional review.
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