Installation companies: the shortage of skilled workers is not the only problem

On April 11, 2022, during their TV broadcast, Radar drew attention to the fact that many consumers are currently filing complaints about installation companies failing to honor agreements in central heating boiler maintenance contracts and even skipping maintenance visits. If a central heating boiler is not properly maintained, the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning increases significantly. Such carbon monoxide poisoning can be fatal.

Skilled workers are scarce

AVROTROS Radar allowed installation companies to respond to this, and it emerges that they are struggling with a shortage of skilled workers, partly due to the coronavirus crisis. With the introduction of the Gas Boiler Act, which stipulates that only certified technicians may work on central heating boilers, the scarcity will only increase.

Optimize work processes without hiring extra staff

What many installation companies do not realize is that there are multiple ways to optimize work processes without hiring additional personnel. Of course, more people get more work done, but how efficient is your current planning actually? How much travel time do your technicians currently spend, and how much profit can still be gained there? And how complex is creating that current schedule anyway? The right service and maintenance software, with an extensive planning module, maximizes capacity and accounts for the locations of various jobs and parts in the service van. If an urgent job comes in, the system also takes this into account, and the job is easily assigned to the technician with the least travel time and the correct parts in his van.

Insight into required maintenance with the right software

Our experts also regularly observe that installation companies have absolutely no insight into which central heating boilers are due for their biennial maintenance. This is also confirmed by the Radar investigation, with many consumers indicating that their boilers have not been maintained for 4 years. It is, of course, logical that a boiler without regular maintenance causes problems more quickly, which in turn increases the number of emergency jobs. How do you actually keep track of when a specific central heating boiler is due for maintenance? Often, the current software you use is not at all suitable for recording this kind of information, and that is just as much of a problem as the shortage of skilled workers. With Bluace’s service and maintenance software, you manage at the object level and gain insight into when each boiler is due for maintenance. Using this information, you can easily create an efficient schedule that directly accounts for technicians’ qualifications under the Boiler Act.