DHP Property Consultants

The core activities of the DHP practice based in Weybridge, Surrey, are chartered surveying, architecture and engineering. In addition to this, they have more recently developed Facility Management and Project Management services to enable them to exploit their expertise in the field. Jackie Smith, their Helpdesk Manager, explains, "The company background is in full property consultancy. The FM consultancy side came later. It was a deliberate strategy, aimed in particular at some schools, since the voluntary-aided sector was given more responsibility for their own facilities in 2002. So we deal directly with those schools – there's no need to go through the local authorities, for example."

Simple solution, maximum control
"Most Planon users have the direct responsibility for carrying out the work on the buildings under their control," she points out. "But we are not so typical. We're providing consultancy, using our expertise to help and advise the customers and using Planon as a means of keeping the information under control. We handle day-to-day repair work, statutory requirements for maintenance planning and small improvement jobs for about 100 schools. It's just a small system, based on the Helpdesk module with a couple of others as the back office. There are just the two of us here who act as the point of contact for the schools. Many of them are happy just to be able to ring up and get advice on suitable contractors and so forth. And they aren't very high-tech users – there's no particular requirement to use FacilityNet to provide an intranet-based solution for them, for example. And the volume of calls we receive doesn't justify that kind of expenditure either."

‘What we did like was the flexibility in the way things could be customised and configured.’

Easy implementation
"We have been using our two-user Planon system for about two years now. The company did help us with the implementation path and the training, but in some ways it was easy. We were a ‘green field site’: many people have their own working procedures and have to go through awkward changes. But we were implementing a helpdesk and front office information system from scratch, using Planon as a database for organising our FM consultancy. What we did like was the flexibility in the waythings could be customised and configured."

Keeping customers happy
"The system has certainly met our expectations as far as the administrative side of things was concerned," says Jackie Smith. "We also use the Alarms module and the Contract Management module. We had a few teething problems, but Planon Ltd in Brighton are always ready to help. Although there's no immediate need for additional modules, we aim to improve the services provided using
what we have."