The certificate the customer never got
A customer selling their house is asked for the Building Regulations compliance certificate for the boiler you fitted two years ago. They ring you. You check. The install was done, the Benchmark checklist was completed, but the notification was submitted late and the certificate went to an old address.
It's sortable, but it takes time, and the customer's solicitor is waiting.
Checking back through the year, the office finds a few other installs where the notification went in later than it should have, each for a different ordinary reason: a lost job sheet, a busy fortnight, an engineer on holiday.
Why notifications lag
Notifying a boiler install is usually quick once you have the details. The details are the problem: the engineer's Gas Safe number, appliance details, install address, date. They're on the engineer's paperwork or in their head, and the office gets them when the engineer drops off the paperwork, which might be days later.
Notifications are then done in a batch, whenever the office has a free hour. When a busy week comes, the batch waits.
| Step | Where it sits |
|---|---|
| Install complete | Engineer |
| Details for notification | Engineer's paperwork |
| Submission | Office, in batches |
| Certificate issued | Posted to the customer address on file |
| Customer queries | Arrive years later |
Engineers who fit only occasionally are the most likely to be missed. A busy install team gets into a rhythm, but a service engineer who swaps one boiler a month may not realise the office needs the details from him in a particular way, and the job sits until someone notices.
What late notification costs
Your registration body sets expectations about notifying on time, and repeated lateness is the kind of thing that gets noticed. Customers with missing certificates call you at inconvenient moments. And the office spends time on old jobs instead of new ones. What's required and by when is for you and your registration body; our part is making it hard to miss.
It also creates doubt about everything else. If one notification was late, a customer or registration body can reasonably wonder about others, and answering that question properly means checking every install.
The notification queue we build
- Job close capture: when the engineer closes an install job, the details the notification needs are collected on their phone, mostly pre-filled from the job and the data badge photo.
- Queue: each install appears in a notification queue with its install date and how many days it has been waiting.
- Prepared details: the details are laid out in the order the notification service asks for, so whoever submits it copies rather than searches.
- Status: notifications are marked submitted with a reference, and confirmed when the certificate is issued.
- Customer copy: when the certificate arrives, or its reference is known, the customer is sent a copy or told how to get one, and it is filed against the job.
- Overdue alerts: anything approaching your internal deadline is flagged to the office manager and the owner.
Notifications that happen by habit
The office always knows what's outstanding. Engineers don't need to drop paperwork off before anything can happen. Customers get their certificate reference with their paperwork, and when a solicitor calls years later, the answer is a search away.
It also makes it easier to spot patterns. If one engineer's installs are regularly waiting for missing details, the owner can see it and fix the cause, rather than blaming the office for delays that start on site.
Customers also get a better experience. Their paperwork arrives complete, with a clear note of what certificate to expect and when.
Does this happen to you?
- Notifications are done in batches when someone has time.
- The office waits for engineers' paperwork before notifying.
- Customers call about missing compliance certificates.
- You couldn't quickly list installs not yet notified.
- Certificates are sent to addresses that are out of date.