What makes a good measure?
A practical field guide for housing leaders: see beyond the dashboard, understand what your repairs service is capable of today, and improve the way repairs really work. Free to download, 29 pages, with a one-page worksheet to take into the work.
Same organisation.
Two very different stories.
The dashboard says 97%. Rebuilt one at a time, 560 repairs took an average of 216 days to complete.
repairs
Illustration, not the case data. Each dot is one simulated repair, set to match the figures published in Housing Repairs ER: 560 repairs, a mean of 216 days, an upper process limit of about 1,081 days and a few repairs near 2,000 days.
How to establish current capability
A practical guide for housing repairs managers. Follow these steps to understand what your system is actually achieving.
- 1Start with what matters to the customer
Measure end-to-end completion time: from first report to the repair properly completed.
- 2Collect a meaningful sample
- At least 100 completed repairs (560 in the book's case).
- Use consecutive cases.
- Include different repair types.
- Aim for 12 months of data.
- 3Arrange by completion date
List each repair in the order it was completed. Calculate the elapsed days from report to completion.
- 4Plot the results
Create a chart with one dot per repair. This makes variation and outliers visible.
- 5Calculate the mean and limits
- Calculate the mean.
- Use an individuals and moving-range (XmR) chart.
- Multiply the average moving range by 2.66.
- Draw upper and lower process limits.
- 6Look for patterns over time
- Are there trends? Unusual points?
- Has performance shifted?
- Use at least 12 months of data.
- 7Investigate the work behind the numbers
- Examine long and short repairs.
- What caused the delays?
- What enables quick completions?
- Focus on the system, not individuals.
- 8Put the measure where people can use it
- Share the chart with operatives, schedulers and leaders.
- Use it to test changes and guide improvement.
The first principle: Establish what your system is capable of achieving before deciding what you want it to achieve.
Measure outcomes that matter to customers. Study the performance of the work over time. Understand its variation. Investigate what produces that performance.
Figures: Stuart Corrigan and Neil Alexander, Housing Repairs ER, chapter 6. One service's own records, not a sector benchmark. Photo: illustration.
Who set the finishing line?
On 4 November 2025 the Regulator of Social Housing reported that landlords completed more than 11 million non-emergency repairs in 2024/25, and 79% of them within their target timescales. It sounds reassuring until you ask who decided what "on time" means. Landlords define the timescales used in the measure themselves.
Suppose I decided that eight hours was a world-class marathon. Becoming a world-class marathon runner wouldn't seem quite so difficult.
Same service. Two different stories.
In one service described in Housing Repairs ER, the dashboard showed 97% of routine repairs completed within target. John Little and the team asked a different question: from the moment a tenant first reported a problem, how long until it was actually fixed? The reporting system couldn't answer it, so they reconstructed 560 repairs one at a time.
Neither number had to be wrong. The dashboard reported jobs against the organisation's own definitions and deadlines. The repair histories showed what tenants were living through, and gave somewhere to begin improving.
Establish current capability first
Before deciding what performance ought to be, discover what your system actually achieves: the eight steps above, in detail in the guide. A real example of such a chart, before and after a redesign, is on the evidence page.
Eight measures. Not eight targets.
End-to-end time is the place to begin, but not the whole picture. The guide sets out eight measures in two groups:
| What is the system achieving? | Why is it performing that way? |
|---|---|
| End-to-end completion time | Visits per completed repair |
| One-stop repair rate | Time spent doing value work |
| Age of outstanding repairs | Total resource effort per completed repair |
| Failure demand | |
| Tenant Effort Score |
The point is not to build a larger dashboard. The point is to make the reality of the work visible.
By what method?
W. Edwards Deming had three words for managers who announced ambitious goals: by what method? The guide's answer starts with a dripping tap. A plumber had been to the same kitchen ten times in two years, at about £70 a visit, replacing washers because that was the job he was authorised to do. The replacement taps on his van cost around £60.
He wasn't short of effort, skill or parts. He was working in a system that made following an instruction safer than solving the tenant's problem. A tougher target would not have changed that. Changing the method could.
What is in the guide
- Why "completed within target" can describe a service tenants would not recognise.
- How to establish current capability and read a process-behaviour chart.
- The eight measures, with how to count each one honestly.
- How to study demand, follow the work and change one system condition.
- A worked example from the van: the 40-part van-stock test.
- A Monday-morning starting point and a one-page field worksheet.
Questions landlords ask
Is "repairs completed within target" a good measure?
It tells you whether jobs met deadlines the landlord set for itself. It does not tell you how long the tenant waited from first report to a home that is right. In one service in Housing Repairs ER, 97% of routine repairs were within target while the average repair took 216 days end to end.
How many repairs do I need to start a capability chart?
The guide suggests at least 100 consecutive completed repair histories if you can, and around 12 months of history to show seasonality. That is a useful starting point, not a statistical minimum. If you have less, begin with what you have.
Are process limits the same as targets?
No. Process limits come from the observed behaviour of the repairs system. They describe what it predictably produces today. They are not acceptable repair times and they are not promises to tenants.
Is the guide free?
Yes. It is a free PDF download, with no form to fill in.
