Asset-monitoring innovations have won spots on the third-generation Social Housing Emerging Disruptors (SHED3) framework.
Worth up to £100m over three years, the framework enables housing associations and councils to compliantly buy innovative services from start-ups and micro-businesses.
The framework is run by procurement services provider, Procurement for Housing (PfH). It partnered with the Proptech Innovation Network to find the fledgling property technology firms. Ultimately, 21 firms have made the SHED3 framework.
Among the 21 are asset-monitoring innovations from Warmscore and Vericon Systems. Warmscore is a portable IoT toolset that combines environmental and energy data to benchmark heat loss, ventilation rates and mould risks. Vericon Systems supplies a damp and mould risk management kit that can be installed in minutes to gain real-time room-by-room temperature and humidity information.
There are several platforms on the framework that help residents directly, including Help me Fix, which connects them with skilled tradespeople over secure video calls to address property maintenance issues.
With an eye on the golden thread, Building Passport has also secured a place on the framework. It provides cloud-based software to store, organise, share and analyse building information.
Meanwhile, PlaceChangers offers a community engagement and data platform that assists town planners and asset managers in delivering affordable and social housing and critical servicing tasks for their existing housing stock under programmes such as the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund.
Reducing risks and costs
Jenny Danson, director of the Proptech Innovation Network, said: “I regularly see brilliant, imaginative young firms leave the social housing sector because it’s just too difficult for them to get onto public procurement frameworks. If we want innovation in this sector, we need initiatives like SHED that reduce the risks and costs for both suppliers and housing providers and help talented start-ups to get heard amongst all the noise.”
Neil Butters, head of procurement at PfH, added: “When we first set up this disruptors’ framework, we thought long and hard about how to create an uncomplicated and flexible contracting process that would open opportunities up to small suppliers but ensure housing providers are still compliant. We saw our highest-ever number of SMEs and micro-businesses bidding for SHED3.”
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