Streamlining Maintenance Operations and Empowering Students in Baxter Hall
Baxter Hall, one of the student residences at the University of Cape Town, recently implemented a residence management system that also offers a digital maintenance system to streamline their operations and improve the overall living experience for their residents.
This is in part of their adoption of Serobe, a student residence management system and has proven to be a game-changer for Baxter Hall's maintenance team, enabling them to work more efficiently and effectively than ever before. In this post, we'll explore how Baxter Hall found value in our digital maintenance system and the benefits it has brought to both the staff and the students who call Baxter Hall their home.
baxter hall residence
"Serobe has everything I need in one dashboard which makes my life easier. We do not need to keep log books anymore since everything is managed digitally." - Asanda Makumese, Residence Warden at the University of Cape Town
Paper-based system was slow and inefficient
According to Ms Lameez Dalvie, a Residence Facilities Assistant at Baxter Hall, the old system for submitting maintenance requests was slow and inefficient. "Before the digital system, residents had to fill out paper forms and wait for a staff member to manually enter the request into our system. This often led to delays and miscommunication," she explains.
"Now, residents can submit requests online through a user-friendly portal, and our maintenance team can quickly and easily get assigned to request which we can easily track." - Ms Lameez Dalvie
She also wanted a technology that empowers her in most of here day-to-day tasks and allows her to thrive in her role, these tasks include:
To receive detailed maintenance requests made by students.
To log maintenance requests that she spots around the student residence.
Ability to add comments to existing requests to provide progress updates to students and staff.
Mark requests as complete and indicate when and by whom they were completed.
Generate reports on the number of issues received and resolved on a weekly basis.
It is now easy to prioritise maintenance requests with online system
Lameez also notes that the new system has improved the accuracy and completeness of maintenance requests. "With the old paper forms, it was sometimes hard to decipher what the problem was or where exactly it was located, because some handwritings are also not that legible" she says.
The digital maintenance system has also brought benefits for Baxter Hall's maintenance team. Lameez says that the system has helped them prioritise and schedule maintenance tasks more effectively. "Before, we had to manually sort through a pile of paper forms and decide which requests were most urgent. Now, the system automatically categorizes requests based on their severity, which helps us work more efficiently and ensure that the most pressing issues are addressed first."
Another advantage of the system is the ability to track and analyze maintenance data. "We can see which types of issues are most common, which areas of the building require the most attention, and which staff members are completing the most work orders," Lameez explains. "This helps us identify areas for improvement and allocate our resources more effectively."
The power of the platform
In addition to their digital maintenance system, Baxter Hall has also implemented several other features to improve their residence management. These include laundry facilities booking management, visitor management, room allocations, duty roster management, and incident management to log any incidents that occur throughout the day.
By leveraging technology to streamline their operations and enhance the resident experience, Baxter Hall has set a high bar for other student residences to follow. As Lameez notes, "We're proud to offer these services to our residents and look forward to finding new ways to innovate and improve in the future."
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