AssetQS cuts out overcharging on councils’ repair and maintenance bills

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) August 13, 2010 -- The London Borough of Southwark saved over £600,000 on its repairs and maintenance bill in the last financial year after using a specialist software product to identify overcharging.

The product, AssetQS, has been developed by Ambient Computer Services in response to demand from quantity surveyors for an effective way to analyse and monitor repairs data.

“Public organisations are regularly being overcharged on repairs and maintenance contracts,” says Clive Elsworth, spokesperson for Ambient. “To be able to identify – and then eliminate this overcharging will save councils hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pounds every year.”

He recognises that it is difficult for local authorities or other organisations handling the maintenance and repairs of, for instance, the heating systems, lifts, lighting, fire alarms and door entry systems of thousands of council houses or public buildings, to keep track of every invoice and bill.

“That is precisely why we developed this software, working closely with building services professionals, to create a system which allows easy checking and which highlights obvious problems.”

Derek Anyimiah, Senior Quantity Surveyor, Southwark Council says: “AssetQS helped us identify £25,000 of overcharging per month, per contract, on our two main heating repair contracts. This saved us £606,000 in 2009-2010.”

Clive Elsworth says: “The schedule of rates [standard prices for materials and labour] has gone a long way to help control prices, but there are many other ways that contractors can still overcharge.”

This can be as simple as invoicing twice for the same job or adding on charges for an item that should be included in another item. For example, the code and price for ‘supply and fit a boiler’ would normally include the first metre of pipework, but this pipework often gets added on as another cost.

“From looking at ‘overclaimed’ items, we became aware that many were small in value but quite numerous. Obviously councils did not want to hire an army of administrators to check all the invoices and explain to contractors why they were challenging the invoice, so another solution had to be found.”

AssetQS has been developed over the last fourteen years, continually developing and refining the system using feedback from quantity surveyors and contract managers.

The beauty of AssetQS is that it not only identifies where overcharging is occurring, it also provides tools and workflow processes that make it easy to claim back that overcharging. One of the latest results from its latest version, AssetQS3, quickly identified 12% of contractor costs totalling £16m as potentially reclaimable – a saving of £1.9m.

“The potential savings are huge – and with councils all under such pressure to cut costs, this seems an obvious choice to make,” says Clive Elsworth

www.AssetQS.com

For more information contact: Barry Neil, Mob: 07956 456566
Tel: 0845 130 212. Email: office@assetqs.com

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council     Facilities Management     government     reducing bills