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Foundations June Monthly Webinar - Chris Park | Foundations | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Foundations June Monthly Webinar - Chris Park
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Summary
Core Theme
Lancaster HIA prioritizes building strong, long-term relationships with small, local contractors by focusing on prompt payment, clear communication, and understanding their needs, which leads to efficient and high-quality home adaptations.
Key Points
so our third conversation of the day
we've been very um
very powerpoint like this week is with um
um
chris park from um lancaster hia
hey chris hi paul how are you yeah good thanks
thanks
thanks for joining us this afternoon um
and we had a conversation earlier in the
week so
um i suppose leads on quite nicely as
well from what andrew was saying i think
um kind of your perspective on how you
like treat contractors and kind of how
you manage them
um and just by just maintaining that
that kind of good relationship with them so
so
what are your kind of top tips in terms
of having a good relationship with the
contractors you work with
uh well it was um it was very
interesting to hear all the points andrew
andrew
put and it's it's quite sort of alien
from our district and i think
the size of your district and how you
operate and what sort of organization
you are also has bearing
on the the type of contractors you use
and the management of those contractors we're
we're
we're a small two-tier authority
yeah we're an in-house hia within
lancaster city council so
it's quite a big rural area in the
northwest of lancashire
um and our main connotation is lancaster
and moore come and it only
only totals about 90 000 people with
about 140 000 in the whole district
so um big contractors with with lots of
gangs it fitters uh
a few and far between between so they
they tend to come out of the area if
they're trying to get work from us so
historically we've we've naturally gone towards
towards
small local contractors
and it that has worked very well for us
um it's um
it's good good relationships have been
absolutely essential on
on that fact i learned that that point
when i was cutting my teeth before i
worked for for the hia
i i worked for a a company called mace
they were a project management and
construction company and i caught my
teeth sort of managing contractors on
some airport work
one being at manchester airport and i
quickly found there
um dealing with one contractor that quoting
quoting
quoting lines of contract or threats
just doesn't work you know and i never
used that again
and from then on i i sort of prided
myself in trying to get to know the contractors
contractors
um on a good a good level and from there
you can you can start to exert influence
um and it's really important to
understand the contractors needs as well
in the in the adaptations market our
our contractors the smaller ones they
they come to us for the work they stay
with us
because of security they find the work
rewarding um we pay them promptly
so if they get their invoices to us
by thursday morning we can have the
money in their bank account on the
following tuesday
uh and it keeps those smaller guys liquid
liquid
and coming back for work all the time
you know
um and the bathroom adaptation work a
lot of them find it easy
and they don't want to be part of a complex
complex
big project of contracts you know they
they like to go into one bathroom and
fit it out and move on to the next one
so how do you manage your list of
contractors chris do you have um what
kind of approach you have and how do you
credit them um
when i first started with lancaster hia
we um
we we didn't have much technical
involvement i was mainly
just a grants officer and occupational
therapist would send us
a referral with a drawing and specification
specification
from actually from a manufacturer whose
contour showers at the time
and we just literally passed that on
sent it out
with the schedule to a couple of
contractors that
were chosen by the client and that
that process we gave them the
contractors a couple of weeks to get the
price back
we generally knew which contractor was
going to win the job
before before we even sent the work out
because we'd use them before we knew
their prices
um so the
we've been dealing with small
contractors at that point and then as
our budget
increased we started looking for more
we tended to find them um through either
client choice
the client had heard good
recommendations and they wanted someone
to quote
so we checked them out for them um
through recommendation from someone else
um and from contractors inquiring about
how they
how they do some work for us so we would
go out and vet their
uh their work first before we pass them
the bathroom adaptation to complete
so from that point we we started getting
a small band of small local contractors
and we we got them to sign up to the
lancashire safe trader scheme which is
our local
um scheme operated by trading standards
that gives the contractors a bit of credibility
credibility
it gives the our clients peace of mind
they they recognize who trading
standards are
um so it's quite cheap for the small
contractors to
to get on board with and it takes a bit
of the leg work away from us from
checking insurances and whatnot
um with the backup of if there was any adverse
adverse
adversarial situations that that they
could get involved but
we've we've been doing it for years and
we've never had that situation yet
so that you you see you've got the kind
of backup of a trader registers as well as
as
i suppose kind of actively seeking out
new contractors to um
to join your list which sounds like it's
working very well
and um andrew was kind of talking about
um kind of pricing of of jobs and and
his his kind of thoughts about that so
how do you go about getting your
quotes for um kind of level access shows
and those type of jobs
um well i mentioned before we used to we
used to go out to tender to
um and get two prices in that was that's
always been part of the policy
um that our council has had um so we've
had to stick to that
um we found we we wanted to look into
new ways of
of trimming adaptation procurement time down
down
um and one of them was to try and get
shorten that process considerably and
we we started using your tenders online
system we we got our existing band of
contractors signed up to it
and um that involves
them we produced a specification for
them to price
each item by and
every time we go and measure a bathroom
up we come back and we draw
we draw that bathroom design up in
conjunction with the occupational
therapist and the client
and then we sit down and we go through the
the
tenders online system and select all the
specific elements of the bathroom
adaptation and then that spits out
a total price in a league table from
it's awarded on price but it's also
awarded on availability
so um the cheapest doesn't always get
the job
they'll they'll get the job within a
certain time frame so if they're
available within four weeks they'll get
the work but once they're booked up for
four weeks the next
person gets the job and then so on and
so forth and we've got
quite a high demand for for adaptations so
so
these contractors are generally booked
up yeah you know a good
four to six weeks in advance so how do
the contractors find that
now they've kind of been using it for a
couple of years
yeah they're a bit reticent at first um being
being
you know small family businesses or
one-man bands that change
and filling in online specifications
wasn't overly appealing to them but
once we walked them through it and and
uh got them on board they like it now
the it runs quite smoothly they
they trust our our assessment of a of a bathroom
bathroom
and our designs um sometimes we get
stuff wrong
um they'll point that out to us on the
pre-start meeting with the client
and we're happy to take it on the chin
we know we're not perfect
um unforeseen works because they've
been working for us for so long and
we've got such a good relationship that
we trust them implicitly um they tend to
take photos themselves if we've got to
go out and look at something that's
that's you know a bit unusual then we
will do but
you know some photographs from them and
an explanation of what needs doing
uh you know we tend to be happy with
that great
and you mentioned pre-start meetings
there which was something that andrew
mentioned and was mentioned in the chat
earlier so how do they work in lancaster
the pre-start meetings
um when we award the work to the
contractor that's the trigger for them
to arrange a pre-start meeting with the client
client
we don't accompany them they they're
armed with quite a bit of information
they've got the
the specification that they've signed up
to and
priced they've got a quite a detailed drawing
drawing
they've got um the section of the
occupational therapist recommendations
that doesn't
include any of the sensitive information
so they've got
and because they've been doing this type
of work for so long they
they're almost quite aware of that
they're not just looking
out for bathroom bathroom building
trade type things they're also looking
at the client
in mind as well you know whether they've got
got
a weakness on the left-hand side or
something so they'll quite often pull us
up on a position of a grab rail which is great
great
you know um if we you know put something
in that's uh
that could be problematic so they go and
see the client
um they take their swatches of wool
boards and floor coloring
stay they talk to the client about any
any issues that might crop up during the week
week
uh like andrew mentioned you know there
could be
uh carers coming in there could be
hospital appointments
you know key safe uh operation all that
sort of stuff so that's when
when that's all all arranged
yep yep so and that's working well so
you don't have too many problems while
jobs are on
in progress that they'll kind of run
pretty smoothly very rarely
no we we we have um
we're we're in a situation in our
district where um
we need contractors almost as much as
they need us
good ones that is so there's a couple of
contractors that take a bit more managing
managing
we're always looking out for more um we
tend not to have a great deal of issues
so you know the the two the small issues
that we manage
uh are generally easily manageable but um
um
you know the contractors that we've got
they're only as good as the last job really
really
yeah they understand that if they want
more work from us they've got to come
back and put something right and they do
so in terms of snagging and sign after
you get many problems do you have do you
have long snagging lists or
are they usually done kind of right
first time pretty much right first time
um and if like i said there's a couple
of contractors that
might be might need a bit of coaxing
along at the end of it but it's
generally nothing major
great great is there any kind of tips
that you would
suggest to any of the local authorities
that you've you've
you've kind of found over the last few
years that um
pain probably helps which you gave a top
tip for before
um we have the facility to do that in
our account so there's an urgent
urgent payee method via our finance that
allows that
we've just to give a contrast to what
andrew was talking about
we've we've gone down the small and
local contractor
routes for the reasons before due to our
size and district but
also with the bathroom adaptation
and market and the clients that
we generally deal with we find that
they prefer a one-man band or a family
contractor that it gives
gives the client a uh familiarity to see
the same face
quite a few of our contractors do all
the trades
themselves including the the ultra
flooring installation
um and then get an electrician into to
do those bits
and so the clients like that they like
they like to see the same face every morning
morning
um and that contract is also
we tend to find i'm sure andrew's lads have
have
all got pride in the work but we know that
that
the small guys that we deal with have a
lot of pride
in their work because they know they can
influence every trade that follows on
from them
apart from the literature electrician
but they tend to have a good
relationship with them anyway so
um and so those smaller contracts as
well they
they fit in with our council corporate
objectives as well
keeping things local and boosting the
local economy yeah
yeah did do you have any um i suppose
just in terms of kind of large
adaptations and kind of extensions did
you have to use a different pool of
contractors or do some new contractors
we've got a couple of contractors that
cover both um
the we've always inherently struggled with
with
uh time scales on larger adaptations
just because of
any any good contractor worth his salt
that's doing extensions he's generally
booked up in our district
well in advance um so you know sometimes
we have to wait a while
um but sometimes you know we we can get
them in but
yeah there's a couple that do that um
those contractors that do do that they
they dip in and out of the bathroom
adaptation side of things in conjunction
with the
the extensions but some of its private
work that they do as well so we
tend to battle with that yeah yeah
great chris thank you for thank you for
taking us uh
take us through how things work in
lancaster and um
um yeah thanks for joining us this
afternoon i think there's a few comments
in the chat and
um yes could see that um jobs are done
quite quickly and without any problems i
think uh
um yeah that's quite from roy's report
that's where most of the issues are so
it's good to see that's not happening in
lancaster cheers thank you great thanks chris
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