In this post, we will be looking at a new feature we have added to the Warp It system that makes life easier for building clearance managers, and allows reuse to be maximised during clearances and decommissions.

Introduction

The biggest gains on furniture reuse are almost always during the building clearance period, however, the people who manage building clearances sometimes struggle to fit the demands of reusing furniture into their busy schedule. They have a massive project plan to fulfil, and must also move people into other buildings, before refurbishing the existing building, or selling it on, for example.

The big challenge

Building Clearance Managers have many different and conflicting deadlines that they have to deal with, which means the furniture sometimes gets forgotten about until the last moments and reuse is not maximised.

We're trying to make it as easy as possible for our customers to list the assets from their building clearances on Warp It, because in a perfect world when the building clearance is announced, work can begin on finding homes for those assets and maximising reuse.

What does this look like?

At the start of the building clearance project all of the assets are added to the system with an ‘available from date’ for the day the staff must leave the building.

That is the date that the staff leave the building is the date they stop using the assets and they become available to claim for reuse.

The assets are presented to the marketplace well in advance of that date, so that other staff around the estate, (and third parties in the community, if settings allow) can plan their procurement needs around these assets with upcoming availability.

Any claimants can book those assets by adding them to their Watch LIst.

Ideal moving day

On the ‘available from date’, when staff are vacating the property, anyone watching assets is notified.

Assets are either claimed internally (or by third parties if settings allow). Transport is arranged. And hopefully most of the items are reused. 

The key is to get the items added to the system as soon as you know they will become available at some point in the future (2-3 months prior is the sweet spot) as the longer they are on the system the more people add them to their watchlist.

The barrier to participation

We realize that one of the barriers to changing this practice is that some effort has to be made at the front end to avoid the mess at the back end. We know that the more work put into reuse before the clearance, the fewer scrap materials and assets will be left over for disposal, making the building clearance so much easier!

So, to make that effort as easy as possible...

We've introduced a new feature whereby you can bulk upload assets from a spreadsheet in one go to populate the marketplace.

Part of most building clearances and moves involves somebody cataloguing the assets on a spreadsheet. Now, they can then take that spreadsheet and in one click they can add tens of thousands of assets in one go.

So, how do you do it?

1. Turn on bulk upload in your admin account on the lenu on the left hand side settings>control assets
2. Download the template spreadsheet (as below). This can be found under the ‘Items’ heading in ‘bulk add items’.
3. Give the template spreadsheet to the person who is cataloging the assets. CLUE: This is great job for an intern!!!
4. Make sure that your names of  categories and sub categories match ours. You can see the categories on that same page. 
5. The person cataloging the assets adds in their assets into the spreadsheet.
6. The spreadsheet is then uploaded to the system by the admin.
7. The items are then presented in list view (see below) and their details can be bulk processed- including dates and content . See here.
8. Add in your photos at this stage
9. Correct any errors - usually around category and sub category.
10. Bulk edit if required. 

Make sure the bulk add facility is turned on.

Populate the spreadsheet, making sure you match our list of categories.

Be aware of errors...

When filling in a spreadsheet manually and then uploading to a system there will be  errors as your values may not match our values on the system.

This is a human talking to a robot after all!

In most cases, the spreadsheet will match with the values (for items category and sub category) we have on our databases and that should go live straight away, however there may be errors.

You do need to budget some time, because you might have to go into certain lines on the list view, where the asset hasn't uploaded correctly and do some manual editing to make sure it goes live.

This is especially important around photographs, so just make sure you've budgeted that time. Of course, we're saving you a lot of time by introducing the facility to add thousands of assets in one go.

Don't worry too much about the errors as you can bulk edit lots of items in one go also.  See here.

and when you have uploaded.....

Use the download below to communicate your building clearance