Managing risk with accurate data: Background
Link Wentworth Housing is one of Australia’s largest community housing providers, managing approximately 6,400 homes and supporting about 10,000 residents with around 200 staff. Link Wentworth is Tier 1 approved under the National Regulatory System for Community Housing. Formed through the merger of Link Housing and Wentworth Community Housing, Link Wentworth delivers the full spectrum of housing services from homelessness support through social, disability and affordable housing, and provides tenancy support that helps residents sustain tenancies and participate in their communities.
The goal
Link Wentworth aimed to build a robust understanding of the condition and compliance profile of its housing portfolio to strengthen long-term planning and budget forecasting. The objectives were to:
- Establish a reliable asset condition baseline to guide renewals and maintenance priorities.
- Capture amenity, safety and compliance information to meet Tier 1 regulatory standards.
- Identify deferred maintenance needs and emerging asset risks.
- Provide defensible evidence to support investment and maintenance budget decisions.
- Strengthen organisational capability in data-driven lifecycle planning and risk management.
The challenges
As the organisation expanded through merger and growth, Link Wentworth faced challenges in consolidating data and ensuring consistent, evidence-based planning. Key issues included:
- Legacy data gaps and inconsistent condition information across systems.
- Limited internal survey capacity to support large-scale portfolio assessments.
- Need for reliable, mobile-enabled tools to collect and analyse asset data efficiently.
- Complexities in coordinating property access and tenant communication at scale.
- Requirement for a unified methodology aligned to national community housing standards and NAMS practice guidance.
Our solution
SPM Assets undertook detailed property assessment surveys on Link Wentworth’s property portfolio. This was done in such a way to ensure that Link Wentworth could attain the various goals it had identified, while at the same time addressing the challenges the organisation had previously faced:
- Three tranches of inspections have been conducted, over three years, with over 4,500 properties assessed.
- SPM Assets’ experienced inspection team followed the Homes NSW methodology, with additional Link Wentworth specific components and quantities, to provide consistent, reliable, and high-quality data.
- SPM Assets’ Mobile data collection tool allowed the inspection data (condition, maintenance items, and compliance) to be uploaded directly to a central database, which included photos and notes on any defects. The outcomes of telephone calls to tenants were logged in order to provide transparency in terms of safety, compliance, and tenancy issues.
- Health and Safety Hazards as well as Major Functional breakdown of components were generated as Work Requests, in the field, to ensure Link Wentworth had immediate notification which was a key benefit of using our software.
- A proven quality assurance (QA) process was utilised and SPM Assets’ experienced team liaised with tenants regarding property access.
- The collected data was transferred to SPM Assets’ IPWEA Practice Note #3 configuration to provide further analytics, and reporting. Data was transferred to Power BI, via the API, to provide Link Wentworth with the data for further analysis including benchmarking graphs and reporting.
- Works programmes are able to be identified for maintenance, renewals, and non-compliance issues.
“SPM’s partnership approach and depth of expertise made the process seamless. Their team understood the complexity of our portfolio and provided exceptional support from planning through to delivery. Beyond the technical solution, their responsiveness and willingness to tailor the system to our needs gave us confidence that we were building a capability, not just buying a product.” — Dragan Velkovski, Link Wentworth Housing
The benefits
The collaboration delivered a unified condition data framework built to recognised community housing and NAMS standards. This framework now anchors Link Wentworth’s portfolio analytics and ensures compliance and transparency across its Tier 1 reporting obligations. Beyond regulatory assurance, the dataset supports advanced lifecycle forecasting that helps balance renewal investment, risk and service performance. SPM continues to deliver inspection services that reflect Link Wentworth’s standards for rigour and consistency, supported by jointly developed quality assurance processes that verify both data integrity and inspection accuracy. Through enhanced API integration, Link Wentworth has linked lifecycle asset intelligence with day-to-day facilities management systems, creating a single, data-driven view of portfolio condition and performance.
Next steps
Link Wentworth will continue to build on this capability through future enhancements that align with the ongoing evolution of its asset register and data structure.
If you'd like to discuss how we can help you adopt a strategic approach to your asset management, don't hesitate to get in touch.
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