Procurement teams have a critical role to play in supporting Awaab’s Law

While overall complaint volumes remain modest, Awaab’s Law brings sweeping changes to how social landlords handle damp and mould. But successful delivery will depend on more than just housing and maintenance staff. Procurement teams also have a critical role to play in supporting this landmark legislation.

The new law, named after two-year-old Awaab Ishak who died after exposure to mould in 2020, forces housing providers to investigate damp and mould within 10 days, report results to tenants in three and take action in 24 hours for emergency hazards.

Housing providers must overhaul every cog of their responsive repairs approach to comply with both the tightened timeframe, and new requirements for clear, compassionate investigation, reporting and action.

This is where procurement can play its part. But that part is more than sourcing remediation services and ensuring compliance. With sightlines across all corners of the organisation, procurement teams provide the holistic perspective, strategic insight, market knowledge and commercial value so vital to a full re-design of repairs and maintenance, translating new rules into new delivery models. Here are six examples of how:

Drive collaboration: Internally, three distinct stakeholders operate in the asset space – development, planned maintenance and reactive repairs. Despite each one impacting a home’s risk of damp and mould, they typically work in silos. The Procurement Act, however, puts a strong emphasis on collaboration and pipeline transparency, and this means that development departments are increasingly involved in the procurement process. As a result, procurement teams have a unique view across all three departments and can point out disconnections, promote continuity and join up policy, centring it on damp and mould outcomes.

Share insights: Procurement teams are conduits, guardians and analysts ofhuge volumes of data, on everything from repairs components to operative behaviour, supplier performance to supply chain risk.

Analysing contract management records, for example, such as trends by trade, repairs recurrence rates and materials purchasing allows a deep dive into what’s really happening on damp and mould. This intelligence is highly valuable, helping to build a triaging system and improve repairs performance, both in-house and externally.

Set standards: The Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) and the Thermal Insulation Contractor Association (TICA) recently warned about a rise in unqualified operatives delivering poor remediations that can make damp and mould worse or create additional issues.

Procurement teams have an opportunity to drive market quality here, specifying accreditations for those consultants and contractors bidding for work. A good place to start is the qualification ‘Certificated Surveyor of Timber & Dampness in Buildings’ (CSTDB, formerly the CSRT) which is highly respected.

In-house staff need the right skills, too. Accurately assessing whether a case is significant, an emergency or something else is crucial to complying with legislation. The same goes for specifying a suitable remediation method and calling on the right supplier to deliver it.

Prepare the supply chain: Procurement staff can work collaboratively with suppliers, so they fully understand the implications of these changes. For example, prescribed timeframes may impact a contractor’s staffing, travel or van restocking arrangements.

Increasing demand will impact the availability of specialist workers and a contractor’s capacity to deliver. Ensure your supply chain has recruitment and training processes in place to manage this.

Negotiate extra value: Procurement managers will have strong relationships with their housing organisation’s strategic suppliers and as a bare minimum, all new requirements around damp and mould must be put into contracts. But there is important negotiation and partnership work to be done here, with commercially minded procurement teams exploring additional benefits these businesses can provide around damp and mould. For instance, a firm’s operatives could be contracted to spot and report any signs of damp and mould, even if they are repairing something completely different.

Explore innovation: Finding new technologies to prevent damp and mould is another area where procurement can support. There are a multitude of new solutions using predictive analytics around stock condition, energy performance, temperature and humidity, property access or repairs reporting to identify homes at risk of damp and mould.

AI tools are enabling organisations to meet new timescales by automating processes such as tenant updates, and data platforms are supporting with the integration of real-time data from contractors, housing management systems and tenant contact tools.

Sourcing emerging technologies from smaller firms and start-ups is not always straightforward under public procurement rules and procurement managers can find fresh routes to make this possible.

Procurement teams have a real opportunity to shape how Awaab’s Law is delivered , not just through contracts and compliance, but by helping to build a maintenance service that’s consistent, responsive and focused on people. Their strategic insight and creativity will be crucial in protecting tenants and raising damp and mould standards across the board.

Brad Hughes is category manager at Procurement for Housing. This article was featured in Inside Housing and can be found here.

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