ESTATES

Director, Diarmuid Devereux

Key Achievements

In March 2022, a new Director of Estates was appointed and commenced in the role. The estates directorate are now responsible for the maintenance, upkeep and development of all properties, the management of St. Michaels House housing stock, fire safety in the built environment and the reporting on our energy usage (in accordance with our requirements under the Climate Action Bill). Key performance indicators were identified and set out in the St. Michaels House Strategic Plan 20222026. These included the implementation of five year Housing and Properties Plans. One of the main focusses in 2022 was the development of procedures for ensuring compliance with HIQA plans in our designated centres. These processes and the subsequent assignment of resources greatly improved the speed and quality of works completed in response to HIQA non-compliance notices.

A new role - Housing and Energy Manager - was created through reconfiguration, which was key in developing these processes, and coordinating with our service users, the staff in our designated centres, and the technical teams and contractors on the improvement works. This role also meant that St. Michaels House now had a person responsible for driving an energy action plan across the organisation.

Fire safety also moved over to the Estates directorate in 2022, although there remains a crossover with the Quality, Safety and Risk directorate. This enables a more focused approach to fire safety in the built environment, and enable for improvement works to be included for in estates work plans.

Challenges for 2022

Resources remain a challenge for the estates directorate. Given the large quantity of buildings, and their age and condition, there is a substantial plan of works needed to modernise our properties, especially the day services and offices. This plan needs to be suitably funded and staffed. A five year properties plan will be developed in 2023, which will map out a plan that will enable some priority projects to be delivered. The main challenge for 2022 was the completion of improvement works in our designated centres for HIQA compliance plans. This required the majority of our internal technical services team, and external contractors focusing on works in these residential settings, to try meet HIQA deadlines. Going forward, there needs to be an appropriate focus on our day centres and offices.

Service User Stories/Highlights of 2022

One of the highlights of 2022 was the completion of a number of capital projects for some of our housing units, including Ratheanna, Garvagh, Ballygall, Cromwellsfort, Ardmore and Glenmalure. These projects have greatly enhanced these houses. The largest project completed in 2022 was the improvement works to the designated centre to the first floor in Baldoyle. These works involved upgrades to fire stopping and subsequent decorative improvements.

In addition, several other houses received upgrades, including kitchen replacements, bathroom upgrades, energy upgrades, and new flooring and painting. All of these works have had a positive impact in people’s homes. A full schedule of further works on our housing units for 2023 has been developed in December, and commenced rollout in January 2023.

Projects 2022

Housing capital projects at:

• Glenmalure

• Ballygall

• Garvagh

• Ratheanna

• Ardmore Crescent

• Cromwellsfort Avenue

• Parkview Navan

• Kennington Road

• Boroimhe

• Various other minor works to housing

• Fire safety upgrade works to the Baldoyle designated centre.

• Fire alarm and emergency lighting upgrades across a number of houses, Ballymun HQ building and Templeogue Centre.

• Installation of a backup generator to the CARA facility in Belcamp.

• Over 5500 reactive maintenance requests responded to and closed out.