06. Technical Services

Help Desk

Buildings and Estates Launch a New Online Help Desk, Buildings and Estates | University of Limerick (ul.ie) and Welcome to the Buildings and Estates Help Desk (sharepoint.com) The B&E department at the University of Limerick develops and maintains the physical environment and infrastructure that enables the University of Limerick to carry out its mission of achieving excellence in teaching and research. The Department’s customers comprise all members of the campus community, which includes staff, students, academic departments, support departments, researchers, commercial units and visitors to the campus. The Department’s goal is to sustain and seek to continuously improve the quality of all services which we provide to the campus community. B&E is a customer driven department that aspire to providing an excellent service to all it’s customers. Functional areas within B&E’s operational brief include:

♦ Maintenance of the campus building fabric and associated building plant ♦ Maintenance of all campus grounds, sports fields, roads, pavings, water features, lighting and services ♦ Security ♦ Cleaning ♦ Portering services ♦ Waste management ♦ New building and works projects ♦ Traffic and parking management ♦ Goods inwards and distribution ♦ Space planning and management ♦ Insurance ♦ Energy management ♦ Signage ♦ Key management ♦ Furniture – procurement and maintenance

Buildings and Estates is a customer driven department that aspires to providing an excellent service to all it’s customers.

Mission to support the university to achieve its goals

Vision to provide outstanding physical facilities for the pursuit of academic, cultural and recreational activities

Ethos to sustain and seek to continually improve the quality of all services that it provides to the campus community

B&E receives in excess of 20,000 customer generated requests annually across all functional areas, with 9,809 maintenance requests received in 2020 alone.

Between 13 March and 23 December 2020, the B&E Helpdesk Team received 15,447 emails of enquiry. The number peaked at 247 on one day in August 2020

On average 92% of maintenance requests are completed in 3-days or less and 95% of maintenance requests completed in 5-days or less.

Since 2006, B&E have used Microsoft Excel to log and track all maintenance and minor works requests. Before that paperbased log books were used. The Excel workbook have evolved and been refined by the B&E team over the years to reflect the continuous improvement in customer service and any adjustments to the service level agreement with the University. Building on this experience, the development of the online Help Desk has been delivered by our own team over the past year. This allows great flexibility to adapt the online Help Desk to reflect any changes required to meet customer feedback or service improvements. Prior to the launch of the B&E online Help Desk, all customer generated requests received by the Department had to be manually inputted by the administration team into the respective log. This resulted in a significant amount of data entry duplication. With the increasing volume of customergenerated requests being received, B&E strive to maintain the same high level of key performance indicators and the development of the online B&E Help Desk will assist greatly in this.

Our current process involves manual data entry and is a considerable drain on resources. Some of our main reasons for developing this new helpdesk are:

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increasing volume of customer generated requests being received

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To maintain the same high level of key performance indicators

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Customers can log a call through Help Desk Portal 24/7 and receive an automated unique ticket reference.

The Help Desk Portal will be expanded over time to allow customer generated requested to be raised for other functional areas.

The online Help Desk will also provide the customer with the added benefit of been able to log a request with B&E at any time through the Help Desk Portal and receive an automated unique ticket reference. The customer can quote this unique ticket reference to receive an update on their original request. Currently, the online Help Desk allows the customer to log a request for a number of services offered by the Department, including: ♦ Maintenance f Building / Carpentry f Electrical f Mechanical / Plumbing ♦ Portering ♦ Cleaning ♦ Campus Security ♦ Landscpaing ♦ Covid-19 PPE With links to the B&E website for information on other services.

The online Help Desk Portal will be expanded over time to allow customer-generated requests to be raised for other functional areas.

Using the Help Desk

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Where Can I Find The B&E Help Desk Portal?

What Does The B&E Help Desk Portal Look Like?

How do I log a Help Desk Request?

The B&E Help Desk leverages on Microsoft Power Applications and can be found on SharePoint: Welcome to the Buildings and Estates Help Desk (sharepoint.com)

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Staff:

As a UL staff member, you have access to our new online helpdesk located here.

Choose one of the categories listed for more information on how to log your call. If your request does not fall under the categories on the helpdesk, please click on the “Any other Queries - Contact Us” button and submit your request using the option that opens. To avoid call duplication, please submit your request using one platform (e.g. log your request through the helpdesk or by email. Do not log a call through the helpdesk and email the same request)

Students and External to UL:

Please log a call by sending an email to buildingsmaintenance@ ul.ie providing the location of the request and as much detail as possible.

Some more numbers…

Since the launch of the Online Help Desk

The SharePoint site has been visited 7,872 times. Customers are directly logging approximately 70% of requests on the active categories.