The demand your service creates for itself

How big is it?

When Tees Valley Housing counted its repairs contact for the government's housing pilot in 2005, 45% of it was failure demand, and the largest single cause was tenants asking when someone would be coming. That is one landlord's own count, not a sector benchmark. No public source counts chasing across landlords, which is why you have to count your own.

When nobody owns the repair, the tenant does

One operative diagnoses. A part gets ordered. Someone else returns. When nobody inside the organisation owns the whole repair, somebody still has to, and frequently that is the tenant. They:

1. remember what the first operative said, and explain it to the second;
2. chase the part, the appointment, the person who was supposed to call back;
3. repeat the whole story to each new person who touches the repair;
4. call again.

And inside the organisation, everything looks remarkably productive. Calls answered. Jobs raised. Five successful transactions. One broken boiler.

The organisation manages the pieces. The tenant experiences the whole.From Housing Repairs ER

Get it wrong early, pay for it all week

A bad diagnosis is remarkably productive. It can generate the wrong trade, the wrong materials, the wrong appointment, another visit, another call, another wait. One mistake at the beginning can keep an organisation busy for days.

That is why, in one council, spare plumbers sometimes sat in the contact centre. It looks insane: plumbers are supposed to be under sinks. But water coming through a ceiling: roofer or plumber? Put the person who knows the customer system next to the person who knows water, and the wrong trade stops being sent. A plumber in the contact centre can prevent several future jobs from existing.

And at the other end, the operative who has finished asks one dangerous question: "While I'm here, is there anything else?" Five minutes now prevents a phone call, an appointment, a journey and another interruption to the tenant's day.

Don't manage the activity. Understand the purpose.From Housing Repairs ER

Why this matters for capacity

Every chasing call needs answering. Every repeat report needs raising, scheduling and attending. Every wrong trade burns a visit. None of it appears in the accounts as a line called failure demand: it is just called cost.

Remove the causes and the capacity comes back: better diagnosis, visible ownership, repairs finished the first time. Nobody works harder. The service simply stops manufacturing work for itself.

How to start counting it

1. For two weeks, sort every repairs contact into new demand and failure demand.
2. For each failure demand contact, write down what caused it: no appointment, missed appointment, wrong trade, part not there, not told what happens next.
3. Count the causes. The top two or three are where the capacity is.

Failure demand is one of the readings in the free repairs score.