NYCHA’s Skilled Trades Pilot Increases Productivity by 18%

NYCHA’s Skilled Trades Pilot Program, developed as part of the Authority’s Blueprint for Change’s Transformation Plan, is already transforming how NYCHA operates. Since its implementation on October 26, overall productivity has increased by 18 percent for maintenance and skilled trades repairs. 

The program focuses on decentralizing the skilled trades, which includes staff who make apartment repairs, such as painters, plasterers, carpenters, plumbers and electricians, and changing the work order system, so staff have more time to work on-site and create better relationships with management staff and residents. 

“NYCHA’s Skilled Trades Pilot Program is central to our Blueprint for Change Transformation Plan and is already demonstrating improved staff performance and repair response time, resulting in better service for residents,” said NYCHA Chair and CEO Greg Russ. “NYCHA developed the pilot after rigorous engagement with residents, elected officials and other stakeholders, who provided their ideas and feedback to ensure the program’s success. By assigning painters, plasterers, carpenters, plumbers, and electricians at each development, and reforming our work order system, NYCHA is working to transform its operations model and how we do business. There is more work to be done, but we are grateful to NYCHA residents, our staff, Congresswoman Maloney [an advocate of the program], and all of our partners, for their continued support.”

Maintenance and skilled trades workers have completed 5,588 individual tasks across the pilot locations, and improved the average time for a task to be completed by 5 percent. Due to more direct scheduling based on resident availability, resident presence for scheduled repairs has increased by 47 percent, and our staff has been able to reinvest 62 hours into services for residents that otherwise would have been spent traveling between developments. 

This pilot program, which was the result of two years of resident engagement and developed over the past year, launched at Astoria, Queensbridge North and South, and Ravenswood Houses on October 26, 2020, and will go through the end of the year. NYCHA plans to expand this pilot to all NYCHA developments by the end of 2021, as resources allow. 

This pilot program assigns skilled trades staff to each development, as opposed to borough-based assignments, to eliminate delays due to travel times and allow skilled trades employees to become a part of each development’s NYCHA community. By being on-site daily, skilled trades workers can be more familiar with the unique needs of each development, building, and apartment, resulting in faster repairs, fewer delays, and better service. 

Painters, plasterers, and carpenters are on-site five days a week at each development, and electricians and plumbers are on-site two to three days a week. 

This pilot also addresses how work orders are created. Work orders requiring one or more trades are currently made sequentially per each trade, which could take a long time. As part of this pilot, all the necessary work orders are being made at the initial maintenance visit, and all appointments are being scheduled at the same time, resulting in more transparency, easier scheduling, and shorter wait times. 

During the full rollout to the entire portfolio, information technology changes will be made which mean the original service request will not be closed until the job is complete.