PROCESS: Training community members to check trade work

A key part of Housing for Health projects is checking trade work.

Making sure plumbers, electricians and carpenters do work to a high quality, that is free of any defects, and making sure nothing is missed, is critical for good quality solutions in communities.

Image – Community members on a recent project in Yirrkala, NT, were trained up to check the plumbing work orders in all the houses.

Many remote community houses often have little oversight when it comes to checking completed trade work, and tenants may not have the knowledge of what best practice work looks like, or the process of how to report poor work.

As a part of Housing for Health projects, the trades submit their completed work orders. After the first of 3 rounds of fix work, the project team returns to every house and checks each item that was fixed and any further recommendations made. This allows our project teams to pick up any defects and patterns of trade work to rectify or modify specifications.

Communities don’t deserve poor solutions or poor quality work. Training community members up as a part of the project ensures local people have the skills to identify poor, incorrect or unsafe work in community houses and that they have the knowledge and ability to report maintenance issues more quickly and accurately.

We were lucky on a recent project in Yirrkala, NT, to have a brilliant female community team duo work with us. The duo were trained up at Survey-fix 1 (sf1) and returned on the next stage to continue their training.

We couldn’t have done the work without them, or any of the community members we work with!