Q&A
Work order management and skilled trade backlog
1:36:10
·
6 min
Council Member Banks questions NYCHA officials about work order management, long wait times, and improperly closed tickets. Eva Trimble provides information on NYCHA's progress in addressing these issues and the current backlog of skilled trade work orders.
Key points:
- NYCHA has made progress in work order reform, with 70% of tickets closed with work done
- The current backlog of skilled trade tickets is approximately 330,000
- NYCHA is working on improving communication protocols for scheduling and notifying residents about work orders
Chris Banks
1:36:10
Residents continue to have issues with long wait times for work orders and that are improperly closed, particularly, obviously, tickets being improperly closed.
1:36:22
What work is being done to improve nightly accountability and its responsiveness to those issues?
Eva Trimble
1:36:29
Thank you, council member.
1:36:30
We recognize that the long the long wait times enclosed work tickets is a consistent problem.
1:36:36
However, I think over the last year, especially we've made significant progress here through our work order reform efforts.
1:36:43
We have one of the things we're tracking is how many work orders get closed with work done.
1:36:48
So the the ticket actually represent work performed and not just a closed work ticket.
1:36:53
And over the past year, 70% of our tickets were closed with work done, which was a significant improvement from the prior years.
1:37:02
And less than 4% of tickets are closed with due to no access.
1:37:07
So we're really trying to focus on how we were performing on our work tickets.
1:37:13
In addition, we know that our there are wait times our long for our skilled trades.
1:37:19
It's something we're constantly tracking and looking at.
1:37:22
Right now though, our goal was to keep up on what we call annual demand.
1:37:27
So keeping up on the work tickets that are that are opened each year and each month And so far, we're meeting 99% of annual demand over the past year.
1:37:35
So we're able to kind of keep up right now, but we understand that there's still a backlog and that residents are waiting along time reflective of the number of skill trades we have and our ability to meet those tickets.
Chris Banks
1:37:48
Do you have a accurate number of as what the backlog looks like?
Eva Trimble
1:37:53
Right now, our backlog of Right now, our backlog of skilled trade tickets is approximately 330,000.
1:38:05
And so we're you know, we work to schedule those tickets.
Chris Banks
1:38:09
That's throughout night, Drew.
1:38:10
That's throughout the
Eva Trimble
1:38:11
That's very nice.
1:38:12
Yeah.
1:38:12
And that's skill skill trade backlog.
1:38:15
And so the the backlog
Chris Banks
1:38:17
So the skill trade backlog would be
Eva Trimble
1:38:20
Our our main our main trades are carpenter, plumber, bricklayer, plaster, and that's really the core of our work orders and the repair to the repairs that are needed in the apartments.
Chris Banks
1:38:30
And you're saying that the 300, the number you just gave is an accurate number?
Eva Trimble
1:38:34
Yes.
1:38:35
Okay.
1:38:36
That's for our main skill trades, so the main number.
1:38:38
We do have a small maintenance backlog and
Chris Banks
1:38:41
Does that include scenarios where residents have taken off from work, and the ticket was closed out?
1:38:50
How was that accounted for?
Eva Trimble
1:38:51
So those are so the number I gave is the number of open work orders.
1:38:55
And so right now, work orders are scheduled through our neighborhood planning units, which is one of our major transformation plan projects to create a neighborhood planning unit.
1:39:04
So residents can work a neighborhood planner to schedule their work orders.
1:39:08
We understand that sometimes work orders get closed out, but 75% of the of our work orders right now are having work done.
1:39:16
So we're starting to to decrease that number
Chris Banks
1:39:19
that But but specifically, the work orders that are being closed out and no work is being done.
1:39:26
What are the numbers on those?
1:39:27
How are you tracking?
1:39:28
How are you trying to improve those?
1:39:31
So residents are not taking off from work and losing a value they have pay at their expense, not night to the expense.
Brad Greenburg
1:39:38
I will say in most of these agreement related areas, we have restrictions on staff's ability to do that.
1:39:44
So you cannot do that for a mold related work order, for example.
1:39:47
You cannot close it with a tenant not home.
1:39:50
It's not permitted in the system.
1:39:52
And likewise, for extermination tickets, it requires multiple temps, and same goes for our basically, remediation tickets.
1:39:58
You can't close out within that home.
1:39:59
So we also have put things in place to prevent you from being able to do that with high priority and, you know, critical repairs under the agreement.
1:40:08
And in terms of other items that are being done by our skilled trades and our other staff, we do have oversight now.
1:40:14
So we have teams that go out and check know, I have a skilled trades monitoring program where we go out and see if our skilled trades are whether it's supposed to be, whether or not they're at the appointment that's been scheduled for them, whether or not the right person has showed up.
1:40:27
We also have a quality assurance unit that is taking a sample of work orders that have been closed.
1:40:31
And seeing that when they go back to that unit, if the work was done was done properly, then it was satisfied.
1:40:37
So we've tried to build some on the back end ways of us tracking our staff and seeing if we see trends among particular people.
1:40:44
Who have very high rates, for example, of closing things without work done.
1:40:48
So a lot of us have built tools that look at particular laborers to see if we see higher rates of that, and then we'll do an investigation to that person.
1:40:57
So we do have a lot of things we've developed in the last few years to try to get at that problem, which I think all of us hear from residents, a lot of frustration.
1:41:03
Mhmm.
Eva Trimble
1:41:04
I also want it.
Chris Banks
1:41:06
Critical repairs are are relative.
1:41:08
If you've been waiting for a paint job for 15 years.
Brad Greenburg
1:41:11
A 100%.
1:41:12
Yeah.
Chris Banks
1:41:13
So these types of repair issues or or badly needed repair issues, how are you addressing those?
1:41:22
How are you dealing with those?
1:41:23
How are you tracking those?
1:41:26
So so so these things are not prolonged?
Eva Trimble
1:41:30
So as I said, we are tracking all of our work orders and our performance for those by trade, by the time.
1:41:37
And like I said, we're right now we're keeping up on annual demand.
1:41:41
We know that there's many tickets that we're not getting to.
1:41:43
And we understand that sometimes we fail to show up.
1:41:46
We have emergencies that happen.
1:41:48
Teams get pulled off.
1:41:49
One of the things we're starting to work on our additional communication protocol Right.
1:41:54
To let residents know when we're not gonna show up on time.
1:41:57
So robocalls, text messages, we're looking at other ideas in ways to to
Chris Banks
1:42:03
Are you looking at them or these because these rural calls, those types of communication, should be easy to implement.
1:42:11
So knowing the track record of nature, these are things that should have been implemented already instead of studying them or thinking about doing them now.
Eva Trimble
1:42:22
We are continuing to work on that because it's real time data and it's we're working on, you know, almost 200,000 work orders a month.
1:42:30
And so we wanna make sure that we're able to properly Well,
Chris Banks
1:42:33
it's it's real time data when it tenatives had a a leak or a and a paint job for the it hasn't had a paint job for the last 10 or 15 years.
1:42:42
That's that's real time data too.
Aixa Torres
1:42:43
Mhmm.
1:42:44
Understood.
