Hop on the Bus for Repairs

Repair times decreased by more than 50 percent

Repair times decreased by more than 50 percent

NYCHA’s Manhattan Property Management (MPM) Office is taking a new approach to improving maintenance and repairs response time by using the NYCHA Command bus as a one-stop shop for managing work orders.

MPM’s “Work Order Initiative” (WOI) is focused on the six developments responsible for half of all the work orders in the borough: Baruch Houses, Douglass Houses, Grant Houses, King Towers, Riis Houses, and Polo Grounds Towers. The WOI team is tackling one development at a time, spending one to two months at each development; so far work order response time has been reduced from 46 days to 22 days, a reduction of more than 50 percent.

NYCHA’s Command Bus visits each development for one day, providing a base of operations where maintenance staff, skilled trades supervisors, and planning units can schedule appointments with residents. On the bus, staff has access to phone, e-mail, and NYCHA’s work order system. The first time out, at Douglass Houses, the resident line for the Command Bus’s services stretched around the block. For residents who can’t visit the bus on the day it is at their development, MPM holds follow-up meetings.

“We’re not only taking care of work orders but also addressing the root causes and making sure the issue doesn’t come back,” says Conrad Vazquez, Manhattan Borough Director. “This is NextGeneration NYCHA; we’re working differently. We want to make sure our residents know that we are listening to them and that we are actively working on their issues.”