Meet our Finance Conference sponsors: Switchee
Switchee is one of the sponsors at this year's Finance Conference.
IoT: Scaling up adoption in social housing amidst the energy crisis.
By Adam Gray, Enterprise Business Development Manager
The use of technology in the social housing sector is often associated with risk, asking pertinent questions like ‘Are we choosing the right path’? ‘What if something better comes along’? Often resulting in the frugal ‘let’s hold fire for now’ decision.
The impact of inaction is to retain the tried and tested, inefficient - but known - processes. Simply waiting for the resident to complain before acting is the precise opposite of proactivity. These are no longer delivering the VFM needed for property-based organisations of today.
If we go back 5 years, IoT was seen in a similar place to the paperless office - remember that utopia? The concept was attractive, but no one could build a firm business case around it. The paperless office was a pipe-dream, whereas the capturing of data in real-time is not. The first use of IoT was (ironically) in 1984 at Carnegie Mellon university; students attached a sensor to the vending machine so they knew when their cold drinks were ready and waiting. This is not new anymore.
Since then the use cases have developed considerably and exist in many other sectors more widely. While Social Housing providers have been relatively slow to adopt, an increasing number have embraced the use of technology and built defining use cases and return on investment that prove technologies, like Switchee, work.
As a result, much of the hard work of iteration and development during early adoption has been done with deployment happening at increasing scale and there are some clear leaders in the field emerging.
I’m a firm believer in the ‘Horse to Water’ argument. There is no point in trying IoT if nothing happens to the data once you have it. The key is actually using the data captured.
The best providers, of any technology, look to understand your organisation, challenges and priorities and work with you to deliver on those by turning the data into information and actionable insight for your teams.
However, we cannot force you to use what’s provided. Engagement in the process by Senior team members and ideally executive level sponsorship increases the success of any deployment.
Given the recent volatility in the energy markets, the impact of the cost of living is upon us. To delay action is to commit more residents of Social Housing to both Fuel Poverty for the foreseeable future and to live in properties that are not fit for purpose.
The deployment of technologies at scale within landlords has moved from ‘a nice to have’ to an absolute operational and strategic imperative. Delivering savings for residents (17% per annum on energy bills in the case of Switchee) and enabling social landlords to identify risk of vulnerable residents or underperforming building fabric.
Following a critical review of relevant case studies, the leveraging of your network and a possible site visit to see the technology in action; it may still be prudent and pragmatic to begin with a trial. However, this needs to be meaningful enough to give results for building business cases for wider / corporate use. We recommend starting with 5% of stock, across archetypes, geography and demographics; this enables extrapolation and provides proof of the impact Switchee can make.
Through combining the latest technology and ensuring residents' engagement and adoption,delivering a proven average return on investment within 18 months, is a great example of how Housing Providers can reduce tenants' energy bills, better maintain housing stock while driving towards challenging Net Zero targets.
About Switchee
It is Switchee’s mission to fight fuel poverty and provide social housing provider’s with remote data insights that cut maintenance costs and improve resident well-being. Switchee enables social landlords to hit challenging financial and environmental targets with real time, remote data analytics. A personalised platform identifies condensation, damp or mould risk and flags fuel poverty. Switchee transforms resident engagement and appointment scheduling via a two way in-house communication display.
With a Switchee Smart Thermostat installed, residents optimise energy use, lower heating bills by 17% and reduce energy consumption – future proofing homes and driving towards Net Zero.
We are delighted to be working with over 100 Social Housing Providers across the UK. Proud winners of the 2022, Product of the Year, National Energy Efficiency Awards.