Webinar

[00:00:00] Michael Burns: Hello, everyone. I'm Michael Burns. I'm the Senior Director of Business Development. I have 18 years of elevator experience, and I'm currently based in Chicago.

[00:00:11] Elli O'Quinn: My name's Elli O’Quinn. I'm also Senior Director of Business Development. I've been in the industry for 14 years, and I am based out of Charlotte, North Carolina

[00:00:23] Jess DeBoer: Hi, everyone. I'm Jess DeBoer. I'm our director of our product line services here at VDA. I've got about eight years of experience, mostly in data analytics, which is what we're going to kind of dive into today. I'm based out of St. Louis, Missouri, but my team is national, so we cover a wide area. All right. So we're going to go over the agenda here next, what we're going to talk about today.

Thank you guys all for joining. A lot of you are already familiar with VDA, but we're going to go over a really brief intro on why VDA, who we are and our story. After that, we'll dig into a little bit of a maintenance overview, what type of agreements you're going to be looking at, and then VDA's solution to a lot of the pain points and struggles that our clients and contractors alike are facing across the elevator industry.

We'll dig into your maintenance management, how sort of-- how we have services like Verify that will actually dig into the maintenance and monitoring, and then also your AHJ inspections. That's another level of compliance that you're having to meet, and that's something if you have an elevator, you are very likely required to have some type of regulation, some type of ongoing inspections and annual testing that needs to be taking place.

And then VDA's solution to that is CCM, how people are managing that tracking of your inspections, your certificates, the overall compliance with the AHJs and with your maintenance contractors as well. And then lastly, we'll leave some time here at the end for a Q&A. I'd also like to say if you have anything that you want to discuss that's top of mind, you are welcome to put some items in our chat as well.

We'll be monitoring that throughout this call to make sure that your questions are answered. However, if we don't get to your question, we will address it at the end of the call too. So let's get started. Let's dig in. A lot of you are familiar with VDA, so we're going to do a little brief overview of who VDA is.

We've been around since 1980. We have about 185 consultants right now. Globally, we have over five hundred employees. With our recent acquisitions, we actually have 196 inspectors, and we're constantly growing. So in our next slide here, you can kind of see that we've been expanding significantly through the recent years through different acquisitions.

On this, we started in 1980. We had some build-up of our company there, but really in the last few years, you can see that we've expanded our reach to encompass a lot of inspection and consulting companies, not just across the US, but internationally as well. So companies such as Sierra, ECS over in Seattle, and other consulting firms.

We've broadened our reach nationally and internationally to include HKA, they're [00:03:00] on our West Coast, but also D2E in London, Gunn in Canada, among others. So what we really do with this is to... These expansions have allowed us to offer a wide range of services and develop expertise that really address our client pain points, helping them manage those challenges that VDA and our consulting inspection partners can help take off their plates.

So now I'm going to turn it over to Mike Burns, who's going to dive into some maintenance contracts and why that's where we're starting our conversation today.

[00:03:29] Michael Burns: All right. Thank you, Jessica. Yeah, just starting out, wanted to do a general overview of maintenance contracts, the purpose of those maintenance contracts, and then some key items within your contract.

I think we all understand the importance of having a maintenance agreement for your elevator. Generally speaking, maintenance contracts are set up to keep units running safely and reliably. They're also set up to define a specific scope of work. What's covered, what's not covered, and who is responsible for, items within the contract.

We're also ensuring that safety requirements are being met, and then that the code and inspection compliance is being met as well. And really what that does is it extends the lifetime of the equipment, and it protects the owner's assets. Getting over to the contract checklist, these are all kind of key items that we recommend, everyone on today's call to for, become familiar with, review your contract to see where the gaps are and what's covered and what's not covered for the below issues.

Starting out with maintenance hours and frequency. I think historically vendor contracts are confusing and vague when it comes to how they define preventative maintenance within the contract. They're typically using words like systematic or periodic, even quarterly or semi-annual maintenance, and it's really hard to kind of figure out what that means and how much time is actually being spent on preventative maintenance.

This can really... when it's not clearly defined, it can make it hard to hold the vendor accountable for these requirements and make sure that you're getting the proper maintenance for your equipment. Moving over to callback coverages. Generally speaking with most elevator contracts callbacks during normal business hours are covered, but any callbacks, in the evening times or on the weekends, you're more than likely going to get an overtime bill for those callbacks and obviously, dealing with high overtime rates for that, a lot of these vendors charge our customers.

So really a simple service call can kind of turn into a costly and non-budgeted expense. Next item, parts coverage and obsolescence. Kinda talking about just reviewing your contract, knowing what parts are and are not covered [00:06:00] is extremely important. This reduces the financial exposure for our customers and in specific to obsolescence and obsolete equipment, this is becoming a real hot issue within the industry and our customers.

We're seeing that a lot of these vendors are changing their obsolescence language that takes the risk away from the vendor and puts it immediately or puts that risk and liability on our customers. So it's a really important topic that, we're hearing a lot more and we're going to see more in the future as well.

Safety testing. Making sure your Cat-1, your Cat-5, your escalator skirt test is covered in the contract is very important, but also, tracking and making sure that is completed on time and prior to the expiration of those of those testing requirements, making sure that your equipment is safe and up to the local AHJ requirements as well.

I wanted to quickly talk about the terms and renewals as well. This is an item we always recommend our customers kind of have this in the back of their head and kind of, set this date and know when this, their contract is expiring. Whether you're happy with your vendor and you're just looking to maybe get some better pricing or get some competitor bids to make sure you're getting a fair value for your contract, or if you're unhappy and you're looking to replace the vendor, knowing those dates are critical because a lot of times it's extremely hard to get out of contracts if that's what your intent is.

A lot of times these vendors give you a very small window to cancel. Typically, the language is something along the lines of not more than a hundred and twenty days, but not less than ninety. So you really have a thirty-day window and planning ahead and knowing that time is critical if you want to make any adjustments to your portfolio.

Next slide Okay, so yeah as Michael mentioned to start out the webinar, we want this to be really as interactive as possible. We've got a poll here. We'd love to hear your feedback and what maintenance challenges that you guys are experiencing within your portfolio. So please hopefully everyone sees the poll, and we'll start getting some data, and then I'll make sure in the coming slides we'll try to go over those items as best as we can.

If there's any items we don't cover, we will talk about in the Q&A session. So I'll just give you guys a little bit here to enter your information

And yeah, I guess just, the question itself is what is the biggest maintenance challenge? And then your options are operations and reliability, contracts and cost, communication, [00:09:00] and then compliance and administration

Okay, I'm not sure if those poll, are those polls done or not. Here. Okay, looks like they're coming in. Great Hey, Michael,

[00:09:16] Tommy Tusinac: I'm just jumping in yep. We actually got quite a few responses. It looks

[00:09:19] Michael Burns: like- I see that ... the

[00:09:20] Tommy Tusinac: top one is operation- That's great.

[00:09:22] Michael Burns: Okay ...

[00:09:22] Tommy Tusinac: and reliability.

[00:09:24] Michael Burns: Yeah. Thank you guys for inputting that.

I'll try to cover, the operations and reliability. But, generally speaking, this slide here is just the current maintenance challenges that are known within the industry and a lot of the challenges and pain points that our customers are facing on a daily basis.

With the poll on that first one, the operations and reliability we're seeing this and obviously this is important to the people on today's call as well, but missed maintenance visits is a big part of that which can oftentimes lead to those operations and reliable or reliability issues.

Maintenance is critical to an elevator portfolio. When you're not getting the proper maintenance on the equipment and it's not being maintained typically we're going to see callbacks and entrapments are going to increase for that. Part of that is, with these callbacks increasing, we're also going to see extended downtime.

The elevator, might be down for unexpected repairs. So those are the main operations reliability. We can get into more of those in kind of the Q&A sessions as well. But wanted to also go over some of these other items in here. Incorrect billing rates or proposals that should be covered under the contract.

It's as simple as that, and we'll get into more of that here as well. And then lack of communication. I know that was one in the poll as well. Yeah, we're seeing that our vendors are consistently having to go after and chase down their vendors really to get any communication or proactive communication and really it's just not acceptable.

And then lastly, failed inspections and overdue safety tests. This puts a tremendous amount of liability and the potential for large fines to our customers. And really, these are all, somewhat small details within contracts, but, they can be overwhelming to manage for our customers.

And, we're seeing a lot of times that many of our clients just simply don't have the time, the resources, or even sometimes in the expertise to, deal with these issues on a daily basis.

Go to next slide. All right, so how do we overcome these challenges? We do this through our VERIFY system. VERIFY is simply the checks and balances by VDA to VERIFY that you're getting what you're paying for, and that the contract work is being completed as intended there are five main value props for our VERIFY service.

The first being data transparency and trend analysis. The first step [00:12:00] that we do is we collect all the preventative maintenance, all the callbacks, and all the entrapment data from your competitor, or excuse me, from your contractor or your contractors if you have multiple contractors throughout your portfolio.

We then import that into our customer service portal. The customer service portal is meant to be a one source of information. It offers a view in how your portfolio and how each unit is performing within that portfolio. And then also it allows us to get ahead of any of these repeat issues or missed KPIs.

Promoting cohesiveness between all parties. This is a really important one. Making sure that the vendor, the customer, and the consulting firm are all working together to achieve these KPIs and within the contract is critical. VDA a lot of times has to act as a marriage counselor, per se, and is the go-between the customer and the vendor on these items, which, we're happy to do if that's what's required.

Really what this does is that when all parties are partnered together and the vendor is being held accountable for these maintenance and KPIs, generally we see that, equipment reliability is improved, and we see a decrease in elevator shutdowns. Next topic, cost mitigation, invoice, and proposal review.

I would say this is one of the biggest value props for our customers, and it's an area where our customers typically see immediate results from our VERIFY service. And, really we achieve this through VDA, reviewing these callback and repair proposals. All callback proposals...

Excuse me. All callback proposals and invoices are sent to the VERIFY team for review. VDA then reviews these invoices for correct billing rates, scope of work, and a fair market value for those items that are not covered within the agreement. We will then approve or dispute the invoices directly with the customers, and we'll go over some case studies here in the coming slides of how we actually achieve those cost savings.

But, the real benefit here is that we typically see on average about a 200-250% ROI for this service. Which is amazing. And again, we'll go over some case studies here in a second. And, really, the last four items and what that offers to our customers is it delivers a peace of mind to our customers.

By VDA performing this legwork, performing the checks and balances and making sure that, the vendor is living up to the contract this provides our customer with a peace of mind.

Okay, next slide. Again, VERIFY service, these are the three main areas behind VERIFY and what we, actually provide to our customers. So really the first section here is the review [00:15:00] stage. We're reviewing the maintenance and KPI compliance. As I mentioned earlier, the importance of having a clear and defined objectives to make sure that we're meeting KPIs is critical.

Then we also, as I mentioned on the last slide, doing the invoice and repair proposal review for accuracy. The items that we report on that are within our customer service portal, we review the maintenance for compliance. We're tracking the monthly maintenance hours. And then we're also identifying any trends and callbacks and entrapments as well.

And then we list out the invoice and proposal savings. So we want to be transparent and have all that information as far as the savings that VDA has been able to get through or get the customer through the VERIFY system. And then what we provide. So next slide, we're going to be going through a visual of what the customer service portal looks like and what's included.

The next one would be the consistent maintenance vendor meetings. This is a really critical part of the VERIFY service, where we're setting up regular meetings with the vendor, where we're reviewing the, the maintenance and the callback trends and KPIs. And, we find that these meetings are critical because we're able to memorialize the meeting minutes, get clear deliverables, where the vendor needs to improve.

And then also it's to provide some recognition if the vendor is doing a good job, 'cause we think that's important as well. I am going to now pass it over to Jessica to talk about the customer service portal.

[00:16:38] Jess DeBoer: Thanks, Mike. Hi, everyone. So let's talk more about the customer portal. One of the biggest requests that I hear from our clients is that they want to have a single location where all their elevator data is visible.

So imagine this scenario, your CEO visits a property under your jurisdiction, and they find that an elevator's been shut down. They're going to call you asking, "Why is this elevator shut down?" Right now, that call from your COO might be met with shrugs or vague email threads that you're trying to track down.

With the VDA portal, you can log in and instantly see all the maintenance activity, all the callback types and issues and it... that have been addressed from historic months, meeting notes from our contractor quarterly reviews that we hold, any stamped invoices or proposals, so you can see what your cost is for that elevator.

And then as well as any copies of certificates and inspection reports so that this one's undergoing an inspection. There's repairs that have it shut down. It's estimated to come back up online next week after the repairs are completed. So it becomes your one-stop shop, a complete library for all your elevator-related needs.

So this became a need in this industry because there's a lot of people who are manually tracking this on their own in either spreadsheets or in their own email inbox, maybe on paper, and it's not the best [00:18:00] method. So what we needed to get in place for our customers, the solution was to have a proprietary software, meaning that VDA owns this.

We can evolve it, and as the industry changes, we can continuously update the metrics and reporting based on what we're pulling from the contractor data. Part of this includes a savings review as well. So like Mike mentioned, my team handles invoices and proposal reviews with this Verify service, and my team compares those invoices against your contract, and then the portal will show the invoice amounts versus what VDA saved you.

So we've got some example case studies here too on this invoice review slide. Our VERIFY account managers are your advocates for you. When you come onto VDA or a similar service like VERIFY you're going to have a team member who on my team is reviewing every invoice, every proposal that they send to you.

We can even set it up, so it comes directly to my team as well. So Courtney Hummel, Luke Quinzer, Kim Jaska, just a few of the names of the rock stars on my team that are your elevator advocates. And we've got a couple of cases here that this first one the $51,000, that was a door operator replacement proposal that took place where we actually ended up identifying that the reason this replacement was needed was due to an issue with the equipment itself that was unavoidable.

After VDA got involved, we looked into that to determine that labor should be covered, which was taking up a large portion of this repair taking place. That ended up giving that customer $13,000 of savings. We stamped their proposal with a rejection. They revised it, got us a better number that we were able to digest, and then that got stamped approved, sent back to the customer, and logged in the portal for record-keeping.

Another case, we had a repair proposal where it was, again, another part that was in their agreement. So the reason this happens often is because sometimes local team members at property levels for clients or even local branches of your elevator vendors, they may not have your maintenance agreement on file.

And when that happens, that's usually because there's a national account team that put a maintenance agreement in place. And when it came down to determining whether this is something that you should be billed for, they were going off of what they're used to in their local agreements. It's something that a simple communication can fix and is often reasonably understood by the contractor too.

And what we do, we renegotiate that. We look into their agreements to find what's fully covered, determine that this repair that they were pitching was fully covered, and the client ended up paying no money for that repair The last thing is the most common, this case three here that I have where it's $5,887.

This is actually one of the most common types of billing errors that we have. In this case, the client was getting billed a wrong rate. So they had a national portfolio, and in this case, they were actually in Washington, DC of the US, and they were being billed at a rate for Washington State. [00:21:00] Those are two different rates in this vendor's agreement plan.

So it's a national agreement, but they have different rates in different areas of the country, and they were incorrectly applying the wrong rate. They were also incorrectly applying it during overtime, even though it was conducted during regular time. So this is the type of detailed review that unless you're looking at your agreement, you won't know what type of rates that you'll be-- that you're going to have.

Sometimes local property teams for the clients and our customers don't have access to those agreements. They're handled through an AP group who sometimes doesn't have access to that agreement to see is that the right rate that they should be getting charged. That's where my team comes in handy. It comes to us, we right away see that is not the correct rate.

We request the revision on your behalf, and then once we get that revised revision back, we stamp it, send it off to you with direction to pay. So in this case, they ended up only paying $279 of that original $5,000 invoice. So these reviews, they shed light on surprise invoices, they ensure the correct rates, and they improve the vendor billing practices.

And the result that our customers are seeing is tangible savings that they can then take to that COO and say, "Hey, look how much reviews we've conducted. We cleaned up their invoices and proposals, and we're getting billed correctly now." And that also contributes to a peace of mind that you're getting what you're paying for, and you're not getting overcharged for things that you shouldn't be.

So now I'll turn it over to Elli. She's going to discuss inspection compliance, which is a whole different world of challenges. So Elli, take it away.

[00:22:35] Elli O'Quinn: Thanks, Jessica. So I'm going to start going through just the basics of an inspection, then I'll walk through the challenges, and then I'll walk through how our VDA, our CCM program can help you walk through the entire process.

So just to start with the basics, AHJ inspections are the required safety inspections on elevators and escalators to make sure that your equipment complies with current codes. So these codes are determined by each AHJ, which stands for Authority Having Jurisdiction, and this is the governing body that determines the code requirements in each area.

So depending on where your property is, that authority could be the city, it could be the county, it could be the state. Now in most areas, these are inspections that are required annually. Some AHJs require them semi-annually. And then each AHJ also has its own rules about who is allowed to perform the inspection.

Some states use a third-party inspector, some states perform the inspections themselves, and some use a mix depending on the AHJ. So if you see the chart to the left, you can see any state that's in navy uses a third-party inspector [00:24:00] only. The states that are in gray only use state inspectors, and then you can see the states that are mixed.

So each AHJ is really unique. So now on to the next slide. We're going to do another poll before I get into the challenges slide. So we have a poll just to help us get a better understanding of the inspection challenges you have. So if you could just take a quick second to fill this out, it'd be very helpful

[00:24:41] Michael Burns: Oh, this is what’s coming in

72

[00:25:36] Elli O'Quinn: 80. Tommy, I can't see the results. Can you see them?

[00:25:40] Tommy Tusinac: Yes. So the results are coming in. It looks like- Oh ... a lot of people responded. It's the top one is getting deficiencies corrected, and then behind that it looks like coordinating inspections and re-inspections is the next in line

[00:26:00] Elli O'Quinn: I'll give-- I'll go through that. Deficiencies are definitely a very challenging part of the process. So we'll walk through just all the challenges, and I'll make sure to touch on those a little bit more. So first, the first challenge is there's a constantly changing code environment. AHJs are adopting newer codes at different times.

So what's compliant in one area may not be compliant in another, even if it's in the same county. We're also seeing varying requirements by state and local jurisdictions. So two AHJs could use the same code but enforce it completely differently. We're also seeing AHJs tighten their enforcement, so that means they're writing up more deficiencies, they're starting to enforce penalties and fines, and they're also requiring re-inspections more frequently.

So coordination across multiple parties is challenging enough. That's, it's [00:27:00] challenging for one inspection, let alone if you have to do two. And then I think where the real burden lies is just the administrative piece of the process: tracking multiple deadlines; scheduling the inspections and re-inspections; deficiency tracking, which was noted on the poll, which I'll get into a little bit more on the next slide.

Of course, managing the fees, managing the fines, all while there's really not a good... You don't have very good visibility of where you actually stand in the compliance process. Documentation scattered. Different parties have different pieces of information. It's very confusing to know who's responsible for what and when.

And so that's really where the VDA CCM program comes in because we take all of the AHJ requirements, all the deadlines, all the administrative work, we take that completely off your plate, and we centralize it, and then we coordinate the process from start to finish. So we own the process, and we take that liability off your plate.

So moving to the next slide, I'll walk you through exactly what that looks like So we're going to walk through the inspection certificate life cycle, and we'll start with just the basic milestones of the inspection process. So these are the dots that are in gray. So these are just the basic milestones that need to be met in order to get your certificate.

So first, the inspection gets scheduled by all parties. From there, the inspection gets complete. From there, any violations get corrected. If there are fines, this is where they occur. And, any fees or fines get, need to get paid before you can finally get a copy of your certificate. So now we'll show all the areas where we get engaged.

So all of these blue dots represent where VDA gets engaged to help make sure these gray dots, these milestones, get completed correctly and on time. I know it's just one blue dot, but each blue dot really represents a lot of coordination back and forth with all parties. So we'll walk through these in more detail.

So starting with the first point, so about four months before the inspection is due, VDA will reach out to the elevator companies, the building, and we'll just get the inspection on your radar. We'll say, "Hey, your inspection's coming due in four months. Get this on your radar. Hey, elevator company, this is a good time to go on site and do maintenance or complete any repairs that [00:30:00] are outstanding so they don't show up as a deficiency."

Then about a month later, we will actually get that inspection scheduled. So we will coordinate with the maintenance provider, the AHJ, the third party, any other vendors that are required by code, the building. So we'll do that coordination and nail down a date. So then we'll get... We'll meet that first gray milestone, which is getting the inspection scheduled.

Between getting the inspection scheduled and the actual date of the inspection, we'll send a reminder out to all parties to make sure everybody's confirmed and is still good to come on the date that we agreed to. And we do this for multiple reasons. The first reason is it's very easy for this to have fallen off the radar of somebody, and so we just like to have that extra reminder to make sure that nobody forgets to come.

In the event that somebody does forget to come, then we use this documentation to make sure that those, any fees or fines that occur because the inspection gets delayed, we use that documentation to make sure that the fine gets passed on to the correct person and doesn't become the building's responsibility.

So then the inspection gets complete And then you get the outcome of the inspection. So if the inspection passes, that means that there are no violations. That's very rare. If it fails, which 99% of the time something is going to get written up, then this is... again, per the poll, this is really where we see the process fall apart or stall, and this is for several reasons.

First, many buildings assume that someone else, whether that be the elevator provider or the inspector, they assume that they're going to take ownership of the deficiencies, when really it's the building's responsibility to make sure all those deficiencies are properly coordinated and complete. A lot of buildings don't really know what to do with those deficiencies, so that's part of the stall.

And then also, a lot of people don't get a copy of the violations, or they just expect that the elevator provider is going to get a copy of them. And that's also where our CCM program comes into play because we know all the requirements, we know all the dates, so we will take that deficiency list and based on whatever AHJ you're in, we will coordinate all those deficiencies with the proper parties to make sure they get done on time, correctly.

This is where we often see elevator companies send proposals to the buildings. So we will also help manage that process to see if they're actually supposed to be covered or not. [00:33:00] So from there, with the deficiencies, we will help coordinate those to get done. Once those deficiencies get corrected, that's when we will coordinate the re-inspection, and once that re-inspection occurs, the elevator should pass.

Ideally, there really should not be any fines with our involvement because, again, we've been managing it proactively. And then you have to pay the fees This is another step in the process where we see a lot of people just not even realize that they have to pay the fees. Just gone through this whole complicated process to finally get the elevator to pass inspection.

Once it passes, it's easy to assume that, oh, boom, that permit is going to get sent directly to the building. But no, you've got to pay the fees, so we will do that on your behalf. Once we pay the fee, the certificate will get sent to us. We will archive it in our portal so that we've got the document saved, and then we'll send it to the customer so they can get it posted.

So again, just to round it all out, it is a very complicated process. But because we know all the AHA requirements, we will coordinate the entire process from start to finish to take it off your plate so that you don't get any unnecessary penalties or fines. So now I'll turn it over to Jessica, and she'll walk you through our CCM portal and then some success stories

[00:34:33] Jess DeBoer: Thank you. Yeah As Elli mentioned, so my team does manage certificate compliance management. It goes hand in hand with our verify service, which is why VDA likes to combine those together. But what we've determined is that there is a need for efficient tracking of your inspections, your violations, and your certificates, the fees that are getting paid to the AHA.

There is somebody that is probably already attempting to track this in some method, and probably pulling their hair out the larger their portfolio is, the larger number of elevators that you have to keep track of. So what VDA does is we have a back system, a proprietary system that we're using that monitors every stage of your elevator certificate renewal.

So whether they're compliant and there's no action needed, or if they're waiting on the AHJ to give you something, if there's fees that are due, if there are violations that are open, which is the one that does take the longest to clear and often gets the most skipped over. So I love your guys' comments in the chat.

Please keep them up and stay tuned for the Q&A after 'cause we're going to expand on a lot of your questions. But the one thing that we're hearing a lot is that they don't answer. I tell my inspection company or my maintenance company that something needs to get done, and then the communication stops at some point.

So it's necessary to have some type of tracking in place so that you can keep track of when that ball stops rolling, so we can pick it up and keep it moving at that point. That's where VDA comes in [00:36:00] handy. For large portfolios, this level of tracking that we do is essential because otherwise your certificates are going to fall off the radar.

You're going to start getting penalties for non-compliance. And in regions like New York City, if you don't file by a particular deadline, you're going to be getting a three thousand dollar penalty next year. And if you don't submit your corrections in time, you're going to get a three thousand dollar penalty next year.

Other jurisdictions have five hundred dollars per unit, per violation, per day that you're getting billed for if these are not addressed in time. So it's crucial that you have some type of tracking in place to make sure that doesn't happen. And then in the event that something does happen that doesn't allow that inspection to take place, the CCM team at VDA knows where that ball dropped.

They can tell you the maintenance company was unable to provide a date, the inspector was unable to provide a date, whatever was the cause for that. The repair took longer than necessary, an extension was needed. They know what needs to be done, and they're tracking that to ensure it stays on your radar.

What this does they keep everything moving. They don't allow that communication to stall. When it does stall, we have a large company. So this is where if you guys think back to those inspection companies and consulting companies that VDA showed you guys we're acquiring over the last few years they are crucial in order for us to keep those escalations in place.

All of these connections make for a very large tree of connections that we can escalate to too. So in the event that your local branch stops responding, it's very likely that we already have an escalation contact above that branch at the national level that we can lean on, and there's other jurisdictions, other regions that we have escalations in place.

So in the event that, that communication ever stops, we don't let it stop. We keep it escalating. We will get an answer pulled in. And that's where it's hard for clients to do this because you have everything else that you're worrying about too. Maybe you also oversee HVAC, just overall facility maintenance.

This is a lot to keep in place. You don't have that time to be chasing down after your contractors to make sure that they're doing what they need to do. So what this has led to, it's led to a few success stories. When we go into the next slide here, we've got a few that my team's been hand-holding through.

So the first is a national retail banking client. They came to VDA after poor communication with some other third-party providers that were keeping track of their inspections. They were supposed to be coordinating inspections, but they were still missing deadlines with their previous provider. They also had documentation that wasn't get-getting filed in time, and they had late fees that were starting to accrue and penalties.

So what VDA did, they came to VDA, and we provided them a single point of contact through our CCM account manager, Jamie Welsh, for all of their regions. She streamlined communication, which is standard for any CCM customer to make sure that whatever communication our customers want, if you want to be copied on everything, we can do that.

If you are a “take it, I don't want to see it kind” of person, we can do that too. [00:39:00] What this customer wanted, they wanted a little bit more priority because of how they had been treated from previous providers. So we streamlined their communication, so they were getting the updates regularly. We implemented quarterly reviews so that we can stay on top of any pain points in this current quarter and get ahead of any scheduling issues in the next quarter.

What this ended up doing was this customer had restored confidence in their overall elevators, and they were able to give their clients their COOs, their executive team, their C-suite, more confidence that these elevators aren't going to shut down and that this isn't something that they're going to have to deal with.

In 2024, they were experiencing penalties. They were experiencing elevator shutdowns and non-compliance documentations getting sent to them. In 2025, when this year wraps up, they will have no compliance penalties that they've paid and no elevator shutdowns due to non-compliance, which was a huge win for them. Also, going into the next slide, we've got another success story where we had this national residential community.

In this case a portfolio of about 300 units came to us and said, "We don't have any tracking system in place, and we don't know what fees are due to the AHJ. We don't know if we have any that are past due, and we don't know where our inspections are." So this is on... This is common, so I don't want you guys thinking, "Oh, wow, crazy.

That is something that I have no idea to do... how I'm going to manage that at all." You're not alone. There are a lot of people who have a lot of elevators to keep track of and are just putting it together on their own. In this case, we had our CCM account manager, Aubrey Wallace. She cleaned up their compliance within the first thirty days of them coming to VDA.

And she found that there were actually a high number of penalty locations jurisdictions that give high penalties for not complying. She prioritized those locations first, paid off any fees that were getting due so that there were no more accruals taking place on those past due fees. And then she also started looking into the inspections.

So whichever inspections were past due, expediting that scheduling to get taken care of right away. What this ended up doing was it avoided thousands of potential fines and fines that were continuing to accrue as this customer wasn't addressing the fees that were being assigned to them. It also ended up expanding our overall portfolio with them.

We had a trial sample size originally, and after our involvement and being able to get ahead of some of these late fees that were constantly occurring, giving them a schedule of expected inspections, that we grew their portfolio to six times its original size, so we now manage all of their elevator portfolio.

And that brings us to this national specialty retail client. So, this is a national grocery store that was having an issue with a business license that was at risk of getting revoked and more non-compliance issues getting faced because the violations weren't getting cleared, and they did not have a passing inspection.

So they faced losing that license due to unresolved violations. What [00:42:00] VDA did, we had an account manager who worked directly with the state in order to address whatever was the non-compliance at that point. At that time, it was violations not getting cleared. We escalated that with the contractor to make sure that they did address those violations immediately, and then we expedited their re-inspection so that took precedence to get those penalties to stop accruing.

What that ended up doing is that they met AHJ compliance, and we were even able to waive some of the penalties issued by the AHJ just because of our involvement and previous relationship that we have with these AHJs. That's something that we haven't spoken to yet, but CCM team and VDA, we have relationships with a lot of jurisdictions.

Over 140, 150 jurisdictions that we're working with, and we have common people that we reach out to in those jurisdictions as well. We foster that relationship in situations like this, where we need something waived or something shouldn't have been issued due to this client's involvement.

They didn't have any control of the situation. We were able to waive that off their behalf, and then give them the, give them that feedback that they need, give them that relief of not having any more penalties applying. So at the bottom line, this kind of wraps up the CCM/VERIFY portion of everything, but this is a service that goes together.

And it's necessary for anyone who has elevators really to have some type of monitoring in place, some type of tracking in place. And the larger your portfolio is, the more it makes sense to come to a company like VDA that has these tools at hand that make it better for us to track these things and keep the ball rolling.

So what VDA does, we ensure that our clients... You shouldn't have to micromanage your maintenance company, and the maintenance companies often don't like that either. So we find that middle ground. We get that area where we can actually drive results without becoming the micromanagers there. We enforce the contractual obligations so that you're getting what you're paying for, and that this also helps the maintenance contractor too to make sure that they are reporting things correctly, that they are logging things in their system correctly.

And then avoiding these penalties. So a lot of times maintenance can help you avoid violations. Violations can help you avoid not having violations can help you avoid penalties for non-compliance. So they all do go together, and that's where we wanted to s- pause here today open this up now for a Q&A at this time to kind of go through some of these questions that you guys have in the chat here

Okay, so one of the... I'm going to get to these ones here at the bottom here. So one of the comments that I wanted to speak to is spoke to a couple of times, the vendor doesn't respond. How is VDA different in this? One way that we're different like I said, that big portfolio that we have our big company of all these acquisitions, everyone has contacts, and we actually have people that have come from a lot of these contractors [00:45:00] to our company, that we're then able to kind of lean on their resources and their friendships.

So that's how we negotiate a lot of things, is we actually know the person on the other end sometimes that we're negotiating with, and we're able to meet at the table and come to a mutual discussion. So where other companies will come in and be like you didn't do this correctly. This is wrong," we actually approach it a little bit more open-minded, a little bit more work together, while pointing out the base facts that they need to address these items and make sure that they improve reporting and invoice reviews.

Had this other question here too on the portal and their experience with other portals. I think it was trying to find it here. A portal with another contractor which failed miserably. We found the portal is only as good as the information entered by the technician or the elevator contractor who set up the data.

You're absolutely right. So the data that we get does come from the elevator contractors, but where it can be hard to push as a client to get what you need fixed on that reporting, that's where we have mandated requirements for them to submit. And oftentimes, this is where it goes back to your maintenance agreement too.

You can put items in your maintenance agreement that say your owner or owner representative needs to be able to access reporting based on whatever KPI reporting you're wanting to receive. So that can become a part of your agreement. It can become mandatory. And then if they get it wrong, that's considered, breach of contract.

They're not providing what they have promised and contractually obligated to provide. So VDA does own this software. We get our data from the contractors, but we scrub that data too. So when they're saying that a maintenance item "Hey, we did 18 hours of maintenance on this unit," we're actually going to look at that and say, "Okay, but what did you do for the maintenance on this unit?"

And they're like, "Oh we responded to a call back, and then that resulted in fixing the controller drive and checking it for faults." That's not maintenance in our book. So that's what this team does, is they dig through what is in the preventative maintenance, what's in the reporting to coach our contractors to make sure that they're providing the reporting that they should be.

What else do we got? And Elli, Mike, feel free if there's a good question here that I skipped over. Yeah.

[00:47:18] Elli O'Quinn: Question here, the next one I... From Mike Long. "My vendor wants to charge overtime rates because it appears they are short-staffed. How do I counter this to avoid these charges?" And that's a common issue, and that's part of the reason that Mike Burns was talking about. It’s really important to have a contract that protects you from this and, that could be by having guaranteed response times in your contract.

So if you call in the morning, and you have an hour or two-hour guaranteed response time, but they don't show up until over time, then we can look at that contract to avoid some of those charges. Because, but yeah, that's a common issue, but just making sure your [00:48:00] contract specifies that clearly, specifies those response times will really help with that

[00:48:08] Jess DeBoer: Yeah, absolutely.

That's a common one, those overtime charges getting applied when they're not supposed to be. That's where VERIFY comes in handy 'cause we'll review those as well to make sure that you're not getting those Let's see, what else do we have here? So for anyone asking for us to get in touch afterwards to expand going over the cost of the service, where we're located, contact person in New York City absolutely.

We can reach out to you guys after the call. I think we have your registration information, but we will get in touch with you guys, and then also you can reach out to any of us. We have our... Oh, cool. We have a poll for this.

[00:48:45] Tommy Tusinac: Great. Yeah, Jess, I just launched a quick poll in case people gotta jump. If you want us to reach out to you, you can simply press yes, and we'll get somebody to reach out.

[00:48:56] Jess DeBoer: Great. Awesome. Yes, and these cases are unique too. So that's why if you're like, "Oh, I have something, I have a question," but they didn't actually cover it, and since we're getting close to time definitely respond to this poll. Say yes, you want us to reach out, and then we can actually work through your specific questions that you're working through.

[00:49:14] Michael Burns: Hey, Jessica. Nikki has a question about VDA, and if we actually file through the AHJ. Yes. I know this came up earlier as well.

[00:49:23] Jess DeBoer: Yeah in most regions, again there's about 150 jurisdictions, so some of them have specific filing requirements. But in a lot of regions where a third-party inspection company can perform the inspection, they can actually follow through and file as well.

So a lot of locations, the inspector does this already, but in areas where if you as the owner or property manager are doing any type of filing, that's something that we can take on. We can file it for you, make sure it meets the deadline, and then even pay the fees too. So a lot of times those fees will rack up.

Sometimes those invoices from the AHJ get dropped, and nobody knows when they get dropped, and if you don't pay 'em by time, you'll have to pay a late fee. That's where this team comes in handy because we will monitor any invoices for your locations throughout the course of the month, pay them as they occur, and then bill them back to you at the end of the month with a small transaction fee.

That allows you to avoid any of those late fees, any of that slipping so that... Some locations like California, if you don't pay that invoice by the due date, it's double at that point. You're going to have to pay another $650 on top of that. Same with many jurisdictions where if you don't pay... Texas is a little weird because if you don't pay in Texas on time, you get a $10 late fee, and, but you have to pay those by check.

So there's different requirements of how payments are made too, and this team handles all of that so you guys don't have to take care of it. That's great. I know we're wrapping up on time, and I know there's some questions that I did not get to answer on here yet. But what I'll do is we'll get in touch with anyone asking for us to get in touch with them and touch base a little bit more on your needs, what [00:51:00] you're facing and then how we might be able to help.

If CCM is the answer, if VERIFY is the answer, both is the answer we'll go through it from there and address whatever needs you have

[00:51:11] Michael Kremer: Yeah, this was great, everyone. I really appreciate our presenters, the listening audience. Thank you for joining in, participating, sticking around. As Jess just mentioned, we're going to get this sent out to you guys.

Any questions that we weren't able to get to, or if you have further ones I'd recommend scanning the QR code, reaching out to us, letting us know, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. But again, Jess, Elli, Michael, thank you so much for your time today. Very well done. Thanks to all who are listening in.

And the recording of this, along with the PDFs, the PDF of the slides will be sent to you in the next couple of business days. So with that, I think we'll just go ahead and end the webinar. Wish everyone a great rest of your week and everyone be safe. Take care.

[00:51:50] Michael Burns: Thank you, everybody.

[00:51:52] Michael Kremer: Thank you.

Bye-bye.

[00:51:53] Elli O'Quinn: Thank you. See you.