One less job: how LJ Hooker Penrith took the chase out of smoke alarm compliance

Melissa Jerzyna runs a busy office. As Director of Property Management at LJ Hooker Penrith, she oversees a rent roll of more than 1,300 properties, and every one of them needs its smoke alarms checked, logged and paid for each year. For years that meant follow-ups, missed appointments and calls from tenants wondering why nobody had turned up.

When Mel moved the office's smoke alarm compliance to DC, working inside Ailo, the reason was simple.

Under the old arrangement, property managers spent time replying to the provider about tenant details and chasing access. Since the switch, Mel says, there have been no access issues and no tenant complaints about no-shows. The few jobs DC cannot get to are the ones where a tenant cannot be reached, and those are flagged in the system as outstanding compliance jobs for the team to pick up.

Her estimate of the difference is generous. "It has probably reduced our workload when it comes to compliance by 80%," she says, before revising it upwards: "probably closer to 90."

The team felt it straight away, and Mel puts that down to something modest.

"PMs are busy enough as it is," she says. The hours that used to go on reminders and chasing now go back into the portfolio. "The time that the team have saved, they can be managing more properties or they can be servicing their owners in different ways."

The accounts side benefits too. DC's invoices upload directly into the system, so the bills no longer need to be keyed in by hand. "We've 1316 properties under management," she says. "Having to process 1200 odd bills of smoke alarm compliance a year. That's a big chunk. I'm not having to do that as well."

The team has built its own habits around the process. DC sends through a list of the properties due, with key numbers already attached. Staff print the list, collect the keys and drop them into what the office now calls its DC smoke alarm buckets, ready to be picked up on the day.

Mel is confident in the approach.

For an office managing a portfolio of this size, smoke alarm compliance has gone from a daily chore to something that simply happens in the background, leaving Mel and her team free to spend their days on the owners and properties that keep LJ Hooker Penrith growing.