St Edmundsbury Borough Council
Sweating the Asset
Managing St Edmundsbury Borough Council’s property portfolio with click button ease
Edmundsbury Borough Council is responsible for the administration of an area of Suffolk with a population of approximately 100,000 people. The district includes two towns (Bury St Edmunds and Haverhill) and around 100 parishes.
The Council’s property department has responsibility for a diverse range of operational and commercial property. Operational buildings, essential for service delivery, include offices, leisure centres, car parks, community buildings and public lavatories. The portfolio also includes non-operational property such as industrial units, shops, surplus land and buildings and ground leases. Managing this resource as efficiently as possible is of prime importance to the council.
Portfolio Management
During the 1980s the vision of the Council was to build an information system that would enable different departments within the Council to use the same basic property database as a central ‘data library’. The vision was realised using an ICL PLANES mainframe computer which had been designed to meet the planning and land-use needs of Local Authorities. The system did not link to the financial system, however, and this became a growing limitation as the emphasis of local government property administration was moving from property management to more financially or ientated asset management. Although some found the system difficult to use, it served its purpose for around 20 years until ICL announced that it was going to discontinue support for the system and the Council decided it was time for something new.
Why Was EstateSuite Chosen?
St. Edmundsbury Borough Council began by assessing the offerings from financial software vendors but these products tended to treat assets as lists of buildings and equipment and they failed to meet the Council’s wider property care needs. The project team needed to define what was meant by ‘property management’ within the context of asset management. The search then moved on to find a more comprehensive asset management system capable of property management by a local authority.
After careful consideration, St. Edmundsbury Borough Council decided to implement the 3i Studio software system and chose to use ESTATEManager, ESTATETerrier and PROPERTYFile modules.
These are three of the most popular modules of ESTATESuite which are seamlessly integrated to provide the type of end-to-end capability the Council needed. ESTATESuite also has the capability to link to the Council’s Maps database which included CAD software and other spatial information based on Ordnance Survey.
Initial Data Migration
This was a complex process. There was a large amount of estate management data in the property portfolio. 3i Studio staff worked meticulously to ensure the sets of data married up accurately. “We were especially impressed with 3i Studio’s willingness to adapt things to our specific needs” Betty said. By comparison to the original mainframe system, staff in the council’s property department find it is easy to set up new records on the new system. Report writing is one of 3i Studio’s strengths and according to Betty, “creating a comprehensive range of reports was very easy and staff now have all they need at the click of a button. The reports can be exported to Excel or other programmes as required.”
Estate Management and building records are used on a daily basis and valuation data is also used frequently, although the tools for analysing the efficiencies of operational buildings has yet to be fully utilised. All the software’s key features are in regular use and Betty said that staff have found the system to be easy to use because it has the familiar feel of Access and other Microsoft programmes – requiring minimal training.
Key Task Manager
With such a diverse portfolio of property the Council has found that the central ESTATETerrier ‘Key Tasks List’ keeps everyone on top of things. This features a Green-Amber-Red alert system. Green indicates when actions are approaching, amber when actions or events such as lease covenants fall due and red when these actions become overdue. Betty said “The colour coded key tasks manager appears every time anyone switches on their computer and reminds users immediately of items outstanding”.
ESTATESuite is forward and backward looking and provides a calendar of activity for the Council’s property administrators and surveyors as well as a complete log of maintenance schedules for the operational buildings. The system is set up so that each case officer knows what has to be done at the beginning of each month. Betty, for example, keeps a history of asset valuations, rents and rent reviews.
Reliability
The system has now been operating for approximately two years without problems. Teething problems at the outset were quickly dealt with by 3i Studio support staff and Betty was pleased with the response. She said “When I revalued all the commercial properties two years ago 3i Studio came in specially and imported all the new data to save me doing it property by property.”
When asked how good she thought the system was she added “It just runs along smoothly, everybody uses it and nobody makes comments, which is what you hope for regarding the success of a new computer system”.
Betty said “we felt it represented good value for money and we have since been monitoring capital and running costs and compared to what it used to cost us we are very pleased”.
A lot of time was committed at the planning phase. The original specification was carefully developed by the Council and 3i Studio project teams who worked closely together. This led to a detailed specification that was fully achieved. Betty said, “I got exactly the system I wanted, there were no problems and I am very pleased”.
The Future
The Council has since implemented the ESTATEManager Asbestos Register which has met the Council’s requirements with virtually no adjustment needed. St Edmundsbury is now looking at the next stage which will involve replacing the current practice of photocopying maps and posting paper records or issuing emails with pdfs. 3i Studio’s webMADESimple will provide this capability enabling the council to further boost productivity by making all this information available on the St Edmundsbury Intranet.
