NYCHA Maintenance & Repair Backlog Action Plan
Eliminating the Backlog of Maintenance & Repairs
In January 2013, Mayor Bloomberg and NYCHA announced an aggressive Action Plan to eliminate a backlog of outstanding maintenance and repair work orders by the end of the year.
As a result of NYCHA’s Action Plan to improve its accountability and efficiency in responding to maintenance and repair work orders, we are pleased to report that the number of open maintenance and repair work orders has been reduced from 422,639 on January 1, 2013, to 197,134 as of August 1, 2013. This reduction of 225,505 work orders positions NYCHA to achieve its goal of eliminating the backlog by the end of 2013 and have only 90,000 open work orders at the end of the year.
Focusing on the work order backlog, and dedicating resources even during this tough economic period, has allowed NYCHA to address deficiencies that resulted from years of significant and sustained budget shortfalls. Residents are already seeing many of their repairs being addressed. However, what has become clear is that given the budget constraints, which only worsened with sequestration, we will need to prioritize our work. Recognizing that there are limited resources, work that is primarily to improve the appearance of apartments will not be able to be addressed by staff unless the fiscal situation improves. Painting is an example of this new prioritization.
The City Council has allocated $10 million to hire painting apprentices, and NYCHA will hire about 175 apprentice painters who are NYCHA residents and will begin painting units in the fall. This additional staffing will help the Authority address paint requests in occupied units. Currently, there are about 39,000 vendor work orders for painting, and about 14,000 paint requests for a room or wall are also awaiting NYCHA painters. These work orders will be reevaluated and those where the painting is needed to coat and protect walls after plaster work, or after other repairs affecting the wall, will be prioritized.
NYCHA will face additional challenges in the next several months as it goes through its annual U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development inspections and will need to focus on public space work in addition to the work in the apartments.
To date, NYCHA has added 565 employees to support the work order reduction plan, including 389 new maintenance and skilled trade workers. At the conclusion of this initiative, NYCHA anticipates that the number of work orders that will be open at any given time will be approximately 90,000, which represents the number of work orders we would have if we were handling maintenance requests in an average of seven days and more complex requests in an average of 15 days. Emergency repairs will continue to be handled within an average of 24 hours.
Chart 1 outlines in green bars the number of actual maintenance and repair work orders outstanding from January 1, 2013, to August 1, 2013. The chart also shows in blue bars NYCHA’s forecast for reducing the backlog over the next five months. Over the past seven months, the number of work orders outstanding dropped from a high of 422,639 work orders on January 1, 2013, to 197,134 work orders on August 1, 2013 (a reduction of 225,505). As there will always be “work-in-progress,” based on the new Service Level Goal, NYCHA estimates that it will have approximately 90,000 work orders in progress at any one point in time after the backlog has been eliminated.
Chart 2 provides an average daily rate of reduction of the backlog from week to week. In order to meet our goal of eliminating the backlog, NYCHA needs to close more work orders than are created. To compute this chart, NYCHA looked at the total number of work orders created and subtracted the total number of work orders closed and cancelled. The difference, if positive, is the reduction in the backlog. For example, during the week of July 15, 2013, NYCHA staff on average closed approximately 1,397 more work orders than were created each day, thus reducing the backlog by approximately 1,397 work orders.
Chart 3 highlights how NYCHA performed against its Service Level Goal. Currently, NYCHA is working toward meeting higher productivity goals with the expectation that maintenance and skilled trade work order completions will be done on average within 7-15 days. NYCHA is on track to achieving these goals. From June to July, the average number of days to respond and complete work orders for maintenance issues decreased by 23 days. Meanwhile, during that same period, the number of days to respond and complete skilled trade work orders decreased by 15 days. An increase in response and completion time reflects NYCHA’s efforts to address the work orders outstanding (in terms of days) for very long periods of time. As older work orders are closed, we expect to see a significant improvement in our service level performance.
Plan NYCHA: Expedite Maintenance and Repairs
NYCHA outlined maintenance and repairs as a top priority in our strategic roadmap Plan NYCHA.