PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Single Room Occupancy (SRO) initiative, currently located in Vancouver’s downtown eastside, is comprised of 13 renewed and restored hotels with 1,491 residential housing units. The approximate total gross area is 40,000 sq. m. The contract involves providing those in need with access to stable housing with integrated support services. In addition to the buildings there are parking lots, sidewalks, roads and land parcels that form part of the contracted site. The SRO initiative provides accommodation along with nursing and personal care for people that face complex challenges such as mental illness, alcohol and drug addictions, and physical disabilities.

B&M SCOPE OF WORK

Black & McDonald (B&M) is currently providing full facility maintenance & support services to BC Housing, including technicians that perform all the HVAC, mechanical, electrical and plumbing services to each of the units, including extensive major maintenances, repairs, and project work. B&M provides the following functions across all residential properties: fire alarm and fire safety systems, hot and cold water plumbing systems, building make-up air supply, air filtration, base building systems, breaker panels, backup power systems, roofing maintenance and building drainage, windows/skylights washing, exterior brick work, exterior fencing/signage, and graffiti removal. B&M currently self-performs the majority of hard services and manages key subcontractors for various soft services and specialized services as well.

BENEFITS TO CLIENT AND PROBLEMS SOLVED

B&M plays a major role in supporting additional work requests. These type of requests can vary from drywall repair, to extensive sauna treatments to treat units/furniture and other items against bed bugs. We use a mixture of self-performance and subcontracting for minor projects under $300K and major projects above. B&M is a multi-trade organization that is fully capable of servicing multiple residential units, and producing clearly defined scopes of work to ensure they are delegated to the correct personnel or subcontractor most qualified to execute the work.

As part of the SRO contract, the central call centre is the key system for providing BC Housing a maintenance/repair call line for occupants. Since the inception of the contract, the call centre has fielded more than 4,143 calls and emails from September 2016 to September 2017. This method of communication ensured effective and efficient services for both BC Housing and the residential unit occupants, ultimately ensuring that the services were delivered in a timely fashion and with customer satisfaction. The call centre is also paramount in acting as the funnel for all work requests, and prioritizes them to ensure the effective balance of the maintenance services and the construction activities to take into consideration the available resources for the hundreds of residents located in the various SROs. This has been extremely useful and effective to not only deal with Priority 1 emergency situations, but ensure that if there is any vandalism or immediate danger that could cause harm to SRO residents B&M is able to respond right away to protect and safeguard them.

INNOVATIVE PROCESS

B&M has delivered numerous benefits and improvements for residents, including to quality of life and comfort. This contract has stringent requirements in place as it requires working within hundreds of residences with residents who face complex challenges such as mental illness, alcohol, drug additions and physical disabilities.

It was important for B&M’s facilities management team to get involved from the early stages prior to the renovation of some of the key residences. To ensure smooth operations and clear communication protocols, B&M’s operational team was involved from the bid stage until the commencement service date. This enhanced B&M’s ability to gather value-based input to design the agreement to achieve maintainability, reliability and serviceability for the residents, and log important lifecycle considerations for BC Housing, particularly on the existing facilities that were being renovated.