My involvement with Rand Associates started at quite a young age. One of my earliest memories is ‘helping’ my dad, Barry Patient, carry out the survey of Rand’s old Reigate office, Bell House, in 1984 prior to starting our 40+ year residency there.
Fast forward 10 years and I was back at Bell House working for Rand over the summer after finishing my GCSE’s. I was helping out as a general office dogsbody, photocopying thousands of survey forms, doing manual data entry into a computer that only had a green screen and being sent into London to hand deliver tenders. There was even a room with people who just did typing. Every male employee wore a tie every day irrespective of what you were doing or how hot it was; smoking at your desk was allowed and it wasn’t unusual to have a couple of pints at lunch time over a 20p game of pool.
Whilst this all sounds very old fashioned now, this all happened in the same year that Rand released version 1 of what became the M3NHF Schedule of Rates, a major innovation that has gone on to change the way maintenance is procured in the UK social housing sector.
After I’d finished studying at college in 2000, I was back at Rand, this time working as a Surveyor. I was now filling in the survey forms I’d spent hours photocopying! I was collecting stock condition data, energy performance information and answering questions that related to a new thing called the Decent Homes Standard, which 26 years later has only just been updated!
As the survey data was still collected using paper forms there was always an ongoing logistics process of exchanging blank and completed forms with surveyors, and delivering them back to Bell House where the data was manually input in into our basic asset management system of the time, and then stored in the basement of Bell House. At any one time there was probably several forests worth of paper being moved around the country!
After a few years of surveying for Rand, I decided to see what life was like on the client’s side of the fence, so I left Rand and worked for a few local authorities and housing associations in various roles which included Responsive Maintenance Surveyor, Property Services Manager and Asset Manager. During this time, I got to experience firsthand the pressures that are put on Registered Social Landlords from budgetary restraints, increased regulation, the politics of the government of the time, and tragedies like Grenfell.
In 2019 I came back to Rand (again), and I now work for a very different organisation to the one I first joined all those years ago. Rand continues to innovate through the development and release our new asset management system, M3Vision, which we use for all our stock condition surveys (without the involvement of any paper!) I am now directly involved in writing new versions of the M3NHF Schedule of Rates, which continues to be an industry standard throughout the sector.
Since my first employment with Rand the business has evolved immeasurably, and last year we finally moved out of Bell House into some lovely new offices nearby. I’m pleased to say that no one really wears a tie anymore, no one has an ashtray on their desk, and our surveyors are no longer contributing to deforestation. But I do miss going to the pub for a couple pints at lunch time…!