Westbrook Commons: Maintenance Model Under Pressure
Westbrook Commons is a 182-unit, 1998-vintage garden apartment community in a secondary market. Occupancy is 91.5%, but 38 work orders are open, average completion is 14 days against a 3-day standard, and 11 units are down for make-ready with an average 24-day turn. Two maintenance technicians cover all 182 units plus common areas, and overtime is running $6,200 per month. The HVAC and plumbing vendor bills roughly $41,000 per month and has a 72-hour response SLA that it has missed on 19% of calls this quarter. Annualized turnover is 52%, and recent move-in surveys cite maintenance responsiveness in 34% of negative comments. The owner has approved a $250,000 operations improvement reserve but wants a recommendation before the next budget cycle. The regional manager must decide whether to renew the vendor, add a third technician, or bring HVAC work in-house, and how to sequence changes without destabilizing the current team.
1. Diagnose the operational problem. Which metrics are symptoms, which are likely root causes, and what would you validate first?
Read the worked answer
Separate lagging outcomes from controllable drivers. Occupancy at 91.5% and turnover at 52% are outcomes. The 14-day completion time, 38 open work orders, 24-day make-ready, and 19% vendor SLA misses are operational drivers that feed those outcomes. The 34% survey mention is a perception signal, not a root cause.
Validate three things before choosing a model:
- Work-order mix. How many of the 38 are HVAC, plumbing, cosmetic, or repeat calls at the same units? Repeat calls point to diagnosis or parts problems, not raw labor shortage.
- Technician capacity. Two techs for 182 units is roughly 91 units per tech, above the 60-75 range common for this asset type, but confirm actual wrench time versus admin, turns, and after-hours calls.
- Vendor performance. Pull 90 days of dispatch logs and invoice line items to see whether misses cluster on after-hours calls, parts procurement, or diagnostic callbacks.
Make-ready at 24 days is likely a process problem because it spans multiple trades; adding a technician alone will not fix scheduling, inspection, and cleaning handoffs. The strongest first move is a two-week diagnostic with dispatch data, unit-level repeat-call analysis, and a make-ready cycle-time map. That evidence determines whether the constraint is capacity, coordination, or vendor responsiveness.
2. Recommend an operating model for maintenance - vendor, insourced, or hybrid - with explicit decision criteria and a 90-day implementation sequence.
Read the worked answer
Use a hybrid model, but make the decision conditional on call volume and technical mix. Insourcing all HVAC requires EPA-certified technicians, tools, truck stock, and dispatch coverage; at $41,000 per month in vendor spend, the annualized $492,000 is large enough to justify a business case, but not automatically enough to justify full insourcing.
Decision criteria:
- Call volume and repeat rate. If HVAC and plumbing exceed roughly 45-50 calls per month and repeat calls are high, dedicated in-house capability becomes easier to justify.
- Cost per completed call. Compare fully loaded in-house cost, including benefits, truck, tools, training, and idle time, against vendor invoice plus dispatch delay.
- Control and liability. Life-safety, warranty, and refrigerant handling favor licensed in-house or tightly managed specialty vendors.
- Labor market. A third technician may take 60-90 days to hire; an interim vendor with a 24-hour SLA bridges the gap.
90-day sequence:
- Days 1-14: diagnostic, clean up the open work-order backlog, and set a 5-day completion target for routine calls.
- Days 15-30: add one technician or temporary labor focused on turns; renegotiate vendor SLA to 24 hours with credits and monthly scorecards.
- Days 31-60: standardize make-ready handoffs, parts stock, and scheduling; begin tracking cost per call by trade.
- Days 61-90: decide on permanent insourcing based on 60 days of cost and response data, not on the vendor's renewal deadline.
Do not renew the vendor on the same terms. Keep a specialty vendor for complex HVAC and after-hours coverage, but move routine work in-house or to a tighter SLA.
3. Define the dashboard and thresholds you would use to report progress to ownership, including leading and lagging indicators.
Read the worked answer
Report a small set of paired indicators so ownership can see both direction and cause.
Leading indicators:
- Open work orders older than 5 days: target below 10% of total; escalate above 15%.
- Make-ready cycle time from move-out to ready: target 10 days; escalate above 14 days.
- Vendor SLA compliance: target 95%; escalate below 85%.
- Scheduled preventive maintenance completion: target 90% monthly.
Lagging indicators:
- Occupancy: target 94%; escalate below 92%.
- Annualized turnover: target below 40%; escalate above 48%.
- Move-in survey negative mentions of maintenance: target below 15%.
- Maintenance cost per unit per month: compare against the $250,000 reserve draw and budget.
Add a simple financial guardrail: overtime plus vendor spend per unit. If that combined figure rises while work-order age falls, the team is buying speed with cost rather than fixing the process. Report weekly for 90 days, then monthly. Each threshold should trigger a named action, such as redeploying a technician to turns or escalating the vendor account manager, so the dashboard drives decisions rather than observation.