It is increasingly recognised by government bodies and promoted by organisations such as the Institute of Asset Management that understanding how well your assets are performing is a core business activity and involves the participation of the whole organisation, not just people with “asset” in their title.

Answering the following questions will give you an idea of how well your organisation is performing.

Does your organisation speak the same language and does your technical, financial and housing staff all share a common understanding of what asset management is?

Do you have a single correct source of information about the performance and condition of your housing portfolio? And is your data accessible, up to date, entirely consistent and to be trusted?

If you can answer yes to these questions, then it is likely that you may already be in a position to evidence which stock are strong performers and which are weak using your own agreed performance measures and modelling comparative performance.

If you are not quite there yet but want to be, then DCL is working with a number of like-minded social landlords to help improve the data needed to measure asset performance as a pre-cursor to measurement through the use of a modelling approach.

Understanding strategic asset performance uses both financial and non-financial indicators to build up the picture of “all round” asset performance making use of a model developed for this purpose.

Financial Performance Indicators typically include:

Non-Financial Performance Indicators typically include:

Bringing both together for comparative measurement requires a modelling approach and you can then compare different groups of stock and produce data tables, graphs and diagrams that show why stock are strong performers and which are weak.

This approach is crucial to providing a better understanding of how well assets are performing and are likely to continue to perform in the future. This will help inform strategic investment, acquisition and disposal decisions and contribute to business planning.

Docherty Consulting Limited will be speaking about this subject and more at the CIH Scotland Asset Management Conference & Exhibition on 15 September at the Glasgow City Hotel in central Glasgow. To book your place click here or visit www.cih.org/scotland.