Athena Care Homes cut admin time by 8–12 hours a week with FaultFixers

Athena Care Homes manage a growing network of care homes where safe, well‑maintained facilities are critical to daily operations. As maintenance requests increased across multiple sites, the Estates team needed a more reliable way to track issues, coordinate contractors, and maintain clear oversight of work being carried out.

To support their operations, they required a centralised system that could streamline job logging, improve visibility across homes, and reduce the administrative burden of managing maintenance through scattered emails, calls, and spreadsheets.

By implementing FaultFixers, they transformed their maintenance processes from fragmented and reactive into a structured, transparent system that supports faster response times and better accountability across all homes.

Challenge

Before using FaultFixers, Athena Care Homes managed maintenance through a mix of emails, phone calls, messages, and spreadsheets. While this approach worked at a small scale, it became increasingly difficult to manage as the number of homes and maintenance requests grew.

Home teams raised issues through different channels, after which someone from the Estates team manually logged the job, allocated contractors, and chased updates. Evidence such as photos, invoices, and completion notes were stored in multiple locations, making it difficult to track progress or review past work.

This fragmented process created several operational challenges:

• No single source of truth for maintenance activity
• Lack of a consistent audit trail for repairs and contractor work
• Significant time spent chasing updates and resending information
• Jobs occasionally duplicated or missed when teams were busy
• Limited visibility on priorities, overdue jobs, and contractor performance
• Manual reporting processes for governance and compliance

As Athena Care Homes continued to manage maintenance across multiple locations, it became clear that the existing approach was too time-consuming and lacked the visibility required for effective oversight.

Solution

The team evaluated several options, including generic CAFM systems, ticketing tools, and internally built spreadsheet solutions. However, many CAFM platforms were either too complex, too expensive, or impractical for the day-to-day operations of care homes.

Athena Care Homes ultimately selected FaultFixers because it provided the right balance of simplicity, visibility, and operational control without adding unnecessary administrative overhead.

FaultFixers introduced a centralised system where all maintenance issues could be logged, tracked, and managed in one place. From the moment a job is raised to when it is completed, the platform provides a clear record including photos, notes, and updates.

Key capabilities now used daily include:

• Logging reactive maintenance jobs with photos and clear descriptions
• Assigning work to the appropriate contractor and tracking job status
• Using priorities, tags, and categories to manage urgency
• Real-time comments and updates for communication between teams
• Dashboards and reporting for operational visibility and trend tracking
• A full audit trail for compliance and governance

FaultFixers also supported Athena Care Homes during onboarding by helping configure workflows, priorities, users, and contractor access to ensure the system worked effectively from the start.

Results

By centralising maintenance activity within FaultFixers, Athena Care Homes significantly improved visibility, communication, and efficiency across its care homes.

Instead of relying on scattered communication channels, teams now manage all maintenance activity in one structured platform, ensuring every issue is logged, prioritised, and tracked from start to finish.

Key results include:

• Full visibility and audit trail for maintenance across all homes
• Around 20–30% faster response times for urgent jobs that previously stalled in email chains
• Approximately 8–12 hours per week saved on administrative work
• Around 30–40% reduction in internal emails and chasing for updates

With status updates visible in real time, the Estates team now spends far less time managing the process and far more time ensuring issues are resolved quickly and effectively.

" FaultFixers has made maintenance controllable across multiple homes. We have one place to log, prioritise and track every job, with photos and a full audit trail. We have reduced chasing and internal emails by around 30-40%. We save roughly 8-12 hours a week on admin so we can focus on delivery and performance."

FaultFixers now provides Athena Care Homes with the visibility and accountability it previously lacked. Every job raised across their care homes is recorded, tracked, and documented with clear evidence and history. Managers can quickly see what has been raised, what is in progress, what is overdue, and what has been completed. This level of transparency supports better operational oversight and enables more productive conversations with both internal teams and contractors. With a clear audit trail and structured workflows in place, Athena Care Homes now runs a more efficient, accountable maintenance operation across its entire care home network.

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