SHED Framework win enables public sector to accelerate IoT procurement with iOpt
iOpt has secured a place on the new UK-wide public sector procurement framework for Social Housing Emerging Disruptors (SHED) managed by Procurement for Housing.
The Framework provides access to a whole range of services, solutions and products that will help the social housing sector tackle its many and varied challenges. From blockchain backed BIM solutions through to iOpt’s IoT sensors and DaaS solution that is helping social housing providers to remotely monitor their assets through IoT.
This is the first Framework of its kind for Procurement for Housing, it provides a great platform for emerging businesses and makes sourcing services much easier for the public sector. The framework offers a direct award facility, enabling customers to go straight to a preferred supplier – helping with constrained budgets, simplifying the procurement cycle and shortening project delivery. Now, UK public sector organisations looking for IoT hardware and related services, can get quick and cost-effective access to iOpt’s range of IoT sensors and devices hardware and DaaS solution.
iOpt’s Managing Director, Dane Ralston, said, “We are delighted with this most recent success. Through a highly competitive tendering process, we were able to demonstrate that iOpt possess the right qualities in terms of competencies, capabilities and pricing, to be awarded as a supplier on this new Framework. We look forward to working with the team at Procurement for Housing who are extremely proactive and are already working hard with us to make sure this Framework is a success for us and those that procure from it.”
“This Framework will further grow our public sector customer base over the coming years. It is only February and we already have a secured order book through to August this year. In our six years as iOpt, this is the first year this has happened, which shows the true demand for innovation and IoT in the sector – it’s an exciting time for everyone. The sector is definitely realising the benefits that IoT and DaaS can provide not only in managing growing property portfolios, but also with the challenges the sector faces in its quest to reach Cby28 and PAS2035.”
The SHED Framework is now live and iOpt can be found following the link below:
SHED web page
Damp and Mould - the facts!
In the first quarter of each year tenants really watch what they spend on heating, the are less likely to open windows to ventilate as they are trying to retain heat and those that have had real Christmas trees, may have carried mould into their homes on the tree!
Damp and Mould – the facts!
The weather conditions during this time of year are conducive to growth of damp and mould in properties. It’s not only the damp and cold weather as well as reduced sunlight, but also tenants feeling the financial bite following the festive period. In the first quarter of each year tenants really watch what they spend on heating, the are less likely to open windows to ventilate as they are trying to retain heat and those that have had real Christmas trees, may have carried mould into their homes on the tree!
Towards the end of 2021, the Housing Ombudsman carried out an investigation and subsequently produced a report on the effects of damp and mould in the sector and made some recommendations, Richard Blakeway, of the Housing Ombudsman, said: “Throughout our investigation, the distress and disruption experienced by residents living with damp and mould was evident. These are conditions that no one working in social housing wants to see. Our high maladministration rate shows that a fairer approach is needed. A zero-tolerance approach does not mean zero cases but it requires changes in culture, behaviour and approach by landlords – from reactive to proactive and from inferring blame to taking responsibility.”
How common is mould in buildings?
Moulds are very common in buildings and homes. Mould will grow in places with a lot of moisture, such as around leaks in roofs, windows, or pipes, or where there has been flooding. It grows well on many different surfaces within a building: ceiling tiles; wood products; paint; wallpaper; insulation; fabric. The most common indoor moulds are Cladosporium, Penicillium, and Aspergillus.
How do moulds get in the indoor environment and how do they grow?
Mould can enter your home through open doorways, windows, vents, and heating and air conditioning systems, people and animals can also carry spores into a property from outside. When mould spores drop on places where there is excessive moisture, such as where leakage may have occurred in roofs, pipes, walls, or where there has been flooding, they will grow.
How do you know if you have a mould problem?
Large mould infestations can usually be seen or smelled. However, through intensive research and data analysis, iOpt is now able to predict the onset of mould growth to enable preventative action to be taken.
How do moulds affect people?
Exposure to damp and mould affects people in different ways, for some people exposure to mould can lead to symptoms such as stuffy nose, wheezing, and red or itchy eyes, or skin. Some people, such as those with allergies to moulds or with asthma, may have more intense reactions.
In 2004 the Institute of Medicine (IOM) found there was sufficient evidence to link indoor exposure to mould with upper respiratory tract symptoms, cough, and wheeze in otherwise healthy people; with asthma symptoms in people with asthma; and with hypersensitivity pneumonitis in individuals susceptible to that immune-mediated condition.
Other recent studies have suggested a potential link of early mould exposure to development of asthma in some children, particularly among children who may be genetically susceptible to asthma development, and that selected interventions that improve housing conditions can reduce morbidity from asthma and respiratory allergies.
How do you keep mould out of buildings and homes?
Monitoring - routine inspection of properties and buildings looking for evidence of water damage and visible mould would be the ideal scenario, but when managing thousands of properties this isn’t always practical. Providers are often reliant on tenants reporting issues, but evidence suggests this is only done when mould and damp is at its most damaging. Sometimes, if it is a fabric issue, it is not always immediately obvious to the naked, or untrained eye.
Keeping humidity levels low - between 40-65%. Bear in mind that humidity levels change over the course of a day with changes in the moisture in the air and the air temperature, so you will need to check the humidity levels more than once a day.
Fully ‘dry-out’ pre-retrofit - “Ensure properties have been fully ‘dried-out’ before any retrofit work. We have seen retrofit work carried out and within weeks, alerts are coming through for those properties moving back into mould risk, because they weren’t ‘dried-out’ prior to work being carried out and the all the work has done, is lock in the damp and mould and provided an incubator type environment to accelerate its growth,” comments Emma Blackmore, Head of Client Engagement iOpt.
Ventilation - be sure properties are properly ventilated. Providers are reliant upon tenants to do this, so it means having good tenant engagement and educating them on the benefits of ventilation, especially during Covid times. However, this isn’t always practical especially for tenants living in ground-floor flats. Extractor fans are a good option, but again require an automatic trip function, or they are reliant upon the tenants using them effectively.
Fix leaks quick - fix any leaks in rooves, walls, or plumbing as soon as they are detected so mould does not have moisture to grow.
"iOpt Assets’ easy to install technology will allow social housing providers to spot problems such as leaks, abandonments and conditions that will promote damp and mould growth, through to tenant welfare issues such as fuel poverty. It will also help take preventative action, where necessary, to protect, manage, or even improve homes – from damp and moisture detection, to issues with air quality," Renfrewshire Council.
What does the Housing Ombudsman recommend?
The Housing Ombudsman recognises the challenges for landlords in tackling the issues – including overcrowding, poverty, the age and design of homes – but says landlords should avoid inferring blame on residents due to ‘lifestyle’, when it is often not solely their issue, and take responsibility for resolving problems, some of their recommendations include:
greater use of intelligence and data to prevent issues
adopting a consolidated policy for actions it may take based on diagnosis
reviewing communications with residents to improve tone
improve access to complaints to resolve issues, including alongside disrepair claims, and learn from them.
iOpt’s solution is proven in the sector in helping providers tackle the issues of damp and mould, by remotely monitoring properties and using the data generated to identify and predict issues allowing providers to take a proactive approach to managing their property portfolio.
For more information please contact Emma Blackmore, Head of Client Engagement – emma.blackmore@ioptassets.com
Sources:
· Housing Ombudsman Service - Housing Ombudsman urges zero tolerance approach on damp and mould
· Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Basic Facts about Mould and Dampness
· Institute of Medicine (IOM)
· Renfrewshire Council
iOpt Wins 12 Projects in 12 Weeks
iOpt today announces the award of 12 new projects over the past 12 weeks.
iOpt today announces the award of 12 new projects over the past 12 weeks.
iOpt is the leading provider of internal environmental sensors to the social housing sector in the UK, who has developed unique algorithms that interprets data into actionable insights for social housing providers.
iOpt is deploying its environmental and compliance sensors across a number of properties for 11 social housing providers and a large independent private rental company across the UK including the South East, London and Scotland.
There has been an increasing interest in the technology over the past year, month-on-month iOpt has seen increases in enquires, in October enquires increased by 276% on September.
Asset Managers, in particular, are increasingly looking towards advanced technology as part of their ongoing operations to manage portfolios and to improve service. By simply monitoring CO2, humidity and temperature within properties, social housing providers can unlock a plethora of intelligence.
Tactically, it can be used to manage properties remotely, making better use of time and resource as well as making data-based decisions about the major issues affecting the sector including; mould, damp, fuel poverty, issues with occupancy and the effectiveness of retrofit programs.
One of the social housing providers deploying the sensors is Great Places, who manage over 24,000 properties across the North. Its Lead Innovator - Phil Doyle, said: “When embarking on this initiative to research how a new technology like IoT can benefit us and our customers, it was crucial to find a supplier that would share our journey and our ambition. We are happy to have found that partner in iOpt.”
Mactaggart & Mickel, a private rental landlord, is deploying the sensors across a number of their properties in London. Craig Ormond a Director at Mactaggart & Mickel explains their reasons for using the solution: “Being a good landlord attracts good tenants. We manage a large portfolio of properties and are keen to create an attractive environment for our tenants. iOpt’s remote monitoring solution allows us to see the internal environment of homes in near real-time and allows us to measure temperature, humidity and CO2 levels.
“We also decided to extend their role to include fire door monitoring. The iOpt solution will allow us to reduced property visits through the ability to diagnose issues remotely and more importantly it will inform decisions regarding maintenance spend through evidence collected from data.”
Dane Ralston, Managing Director iOpt comments: "We have been working hard over the past few years to rationalise the data that is generated from our sensors. Our ambition is to constantly innovate and to work with our customers to understand their points-of-pain, how they consume data, how that fits into their wider business strategies and to stay nimble so we can adapt to their needs.
"The past 12 weeks have definitely seen our biggest growth since our inception in 2016. I think it shows a shift in the perception of IoT and the sectors understanding of how it can be used to solve some basic problems in the sector. The insights our sensors can provide is never ending. Every time we talk to clients we discover different ways we can use the data to solve problems our customers are encountering, as a result we have tripled the number of Data Analyst’s and Business Intelligence Analyst’s in the team to accelerate our learning.
iOpt Welcome’s the Ombudsman’s Call to Action on Damp and Mould
iOpt Welcome’s the Ombudsman’s Call to Action on Damp and Mould
Last week, the Housing Ombudsman released a report urging a zero tolerance approach on damp and mould. As reported in Inside Housing:
‘The ombudsman, which made 26 recommendations for landlords in the report, has urged the sector to change from a reactive to proactive culture when it comes to addressing damp and mould, which must be a “higher priority” for landlords. The report notes two “key systemic issues” that persist across the ombudsman’s casebook – over-reliance on residents and a lack of overall responsibility for ensuring complaints are resolved.’
A few learnings from working with the sector
iOpt has been working with social housing providers over the past five years to improve how they manage their properties and to more proactively identify and address the conditions that can lead to damp and mould. Through our environmental sensors, social housing providers can not only instantly detect mould and growth, but through machine learning they can also predict properties that will be affected by it and act before it becomes a problem.
Here are just a few of the learnings from our work to date, which demonstrate how IoT can help:
Damp and mould isn’t just a property issue
While damp and mould will impact the property, the impacts are often far more widely felt. Recently an ITV News report using data from a Kings Fund and National Housing Federation study identified that poor housing conditions costs the NHS more than £1.4bn each year. The root causes are often also not directly related to the property itself, but to the behaviours and circumstances of the tenants, for example it is estimated that fuel poverty affects over 4 million UK households.
As a result, the ability to identify the causes that might lead to damp and mould is often dependent on how aware we are of the non-property related issues, which staff and/or tenants may not be aware of or forthcoming with.
“We have found that tenants are very proud, especially the older generation. We had one client who installed our sensors into a property of a tenant of 30 years. They had always paid their rent on time and never contacted the provider for any maintenance. As a result the provider had no need to contact the tenant. Within a week of the sensors being in place during winter months, it was clear the tenant wasn’t heating their home as the internal temperature was at a constant 12 degrees. An alert was sent to a housing officer and they contacted the tenant to check on their welfare. During a call it was discovered that the tenant couldn’t afford a new tank of fuel. Within 24 hours of that conversation the provider had arranged for a tank of fuel to be delivered to the tenant at no cost. The tenant was overwhelmed with the gesture and within days the sensors could detect regular heating patterns and reduction in humidity within the property,’ informed Emma Blackmore, Head of Client Engagement iOpt.
“iOpt’s sensors monitor the internal conditions of the home and give the house a voice to tell providers the facts, without any subjectivity or bias, and will allow providers to take action on conditions that may lead to damp and mould,” continued Emma.
Timeliness of action is crucial
The conditions for damp and mould can be present long before the more obvious and widely reported indicators appear. As a result, by the time these indicators are reported, it is often too late to make any meaningful difference to the condition of the property without spending big, and some of the health impacts to the tenant will have already been felt.
Using IoT, we can create an early warning system, alerting providers to conditions presenting the risk of damp and mould, allowing providers to intervene, take action and support tenants to overcome the root causes before they become major issues.
“Damp and mould is an issue that often has a variety of root causes and wide reaching implications. While the data collected by sensors won’t tell us exactly what these causes are, it equips housing professionals with timely, unbiased and factual information required to take informed action and provide tenants with the proactive and supportive service they deserve,” Emma concludes.
If you’d like to hear more about what we do, please email emma.blackmore@ioptassets.com
Technology Can Help Tackle the UK’s Housing Health Crisis
In a recent press release, Shelter UK shared findings from their recent YouGov poll of 13,268 private renting adults in England, which revealed major health impacts from the condition of homes. The results from the survey included:
22% of renters said that their physical and/or mental health was affected by their housing situation;
26% said that they could not keep their home warm in winter; and
of those who said they had at least one issue with physical or mental health impact resulting from the condition of their home, 46% said that they had mould present, and 44% said they had thermal efficiency issues.
What does this new research tell us?
The Shelter survey, and the narrative supporting it, makes its key points very well. These are namely that health issues caused by the quality of a large proportion of rented homes in England are of major concern, and that the UK Government should take urgent action to alleviate financial pressure on renters, including reversing the £20 weekly Universal Credit reduction and provide additional grant support.
In addition to the Shelter research, we have existing data and recent evidence from social housing and the wider housing sector that is consistent with and supports their key findings, including:
UK Government English Housing Survey (2019 -2020) and Scottish Government Housing Condition Survey (2017-2019) results indicate that over 1 million social homes in the UK have problems with damp; and
The UK Government Annual Fuel Poverty Statistics suggest an estimated 4 million households in the UK are living in fuel poverty.
These statistics have also been brought to life recently due to work by ITV News, which exposed significant failings leading to tenants living in homes with leaks, mould, damp and overcrowding. The ITV investigation also points to the need for a culture change in social housing in how tenants are treated.
What the data doesn’t tell us.
This mounting evidence highlights that we have large-scale sector-wide issues, within both the private rented and social housing sectors, that will require a tremendous collective effort to overcome. It delivers a call to action that the sector can’t ignore. But the sector, and individual landlords within it, now need the tools to answer the call.
The information gap.
One of the greatest barriers to landlords’ acting on the issues highlighted in the Shelter report is a lack of available information. How can landlords begin taking action without fully understanding the problems within their homes?
Often, even when landlords do aim to build this understanding, they are reliant on outdated, fragmented, unreliable and/or incomplete information. Blackbaud’s Director of Internet Solutions Steve McLaughlin sums this issue up by saying ‘without data, decisions are left to tribal knowledge, or worse, the whims of the highest paid persons opinion (HIPPO)!’
The result of this is that often decisions, while being made with the best intentions, do not deliver the desired results, and do not effectively address the root causes of the problems they’re meant to solve. This can lead to waste of resources, time, money and effort, with minimal benefit to landlords or tenants.
How can internet of things (IoT) technology help?
One way that landlords can gain the visibility needed to protect their homes, tenants and the planet is through applying IoT technology. By collecting data about the condition inside a property via sensors and reporting the results, verbatim, means that information is presented free from subjectivity or bias. Equipped with the insights from this data once analysed, landlords can then make informed decisions about how to address any issues identified. This might include issues relating to:
Conditions leading to damp and mould;
Indicators of fuel poverty;
Occupancy levels; and
Heating systems failure.
While IoT won’t make decisions for landlords, it provides the information they need to be more proactive to protect:
Their homes: by addressing issues early and avoiding the need for complex repairs as a result of long-term damp and mould going unnoticed and unreported;
Their tenants: by identifying conditions inside a home that could lead to issues with health or fuel poverty, and take action to support tenants; and
The planet: by ensuring that homes are as energy efficient as possible.
In addition, this fact-based and data-led approach to problem solving, provides landlords with an opportunity to address some of the cultural issues highlighted by ITV, by involving tenants as partners. By sharing data with tenants, it’s easier to build consensus about the root causes and identify the actions required to overcome them, whether those are actions required by the landlord or the tenant themselves.
In summary, by using IoT, landlords can reduce the gap between their perception of property performance and the reality. By doing this, it helps get closer to answering the question ‘what actions can and should individual landlords take to address the root causes of health issues caused by the condition of their homes?’
To find out more about how you can use IoT to protect your homes, your tenants and the environment, and how iOpt can support you to do so, visit www.ioptassets.com or email emma.blackmore@ioptassets.com
Sources:
Health of one in five renters harmed by their home - Shelter England
English Housing Survey 2019 to 2020: headline report - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Scottish House Condition Survey - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)
Annual fuel poverty statistics report: 2021 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
