Housing officials hire new employees to ensure quality assurance, resident satisfaction

UNITED STATES

09.06.2019

Courtesy Story

Fort Leonard Wood Public Affairs Office

In response to resident concerns regarding housing conditions on Fort Leonard Wood, the Directorate of Public Works, Housing Division has hired two additional permanent housing managers to pursue resident feedback and oversee work order satisfaction.

According to officials at DPW, the new employees are responsible for 100 percent engagement with life, health and safety issues, 100 percent verification of all maintenance that occurs during change of occupancy and follow-up on 5 to 10 percent of work orders completed by Balfour Beatty’s maintenance team within the past 24 hours for quality assurance.

“We go through (the list), we call the people for work orders on a daily basis, we check to see if they’re happy with the work that was conducted, and if the maintenance personnel were professional and courteous,” Housing Manager Jason Bourcier said.

“We also find out if they have any other concerns that were not or may not have been addressed at that point in time when the maintenance worker was there,” he said.

In addition to DPW’s new employees, Fort Leonard Wood’s privatized housing partner, Balfour Beatty, created two new positions to address quality assurance, quality control and resident satisfaction.

Those positions, the quality assurance representative and the resident engagement specialist, are responsible for ensuring that maintenance performed on houses are corrected to standard from an engineering standpoint and are also completed to the standard of the resident, officials said.

The resident engagement specialist also visits residents at move-in, two weeks after move-in and periodically thereafter to ensure the resident is satisfied with their home.

DPW Housing Division Deputy Michael Estright said he personally visits homes with residents whose work orders left them unsatisfied and brings the quality assurance representative from Balfour Beatty with him.

“If anybody’s unhappy, then I go out and I personally visit every single one,” he said.

New practices have been implemented to ensure housing issues are prevented before residents even move in, according to Housing Division Chief Luis Rosario-Febus.

“One of the things that we didn’t do before is what’s called ‘between occupant maintenance,’” he said. “So when one person leaves, the maintenance crew has a period of seven days that they have to go through house, top to bottom, and fix everything, clean and have everything ready for the next resident to rent. That’s a new practice.”

DPW officials reminded residents to first submit work orders to Balfour Beatty by calling 573.329.4000. In the event those are not properly dealt with, officials said DPW can advocate to the contractor on behalf of the resident. Residents can also call the housing 24-hour hotline at 573.329.3926.

• Date Taken: 09.06.2019
• Date Posted: 09.09.2019 16:15
• Story ID: 339067
• Location: US