Protecting the UK's homes whilst laying foundations for the future

About Clarion Housing Group 

Clarion Housing Group (Clarion) is the largest housing association in the United Kingdom with 125,000 properties across more than 170 local authorities. Clarion provides a home to over 350,000 people.

The Project

By December 2025 all customers on the UK’s PSTN network will be transferred to a fully digital network. Openreach are terminating the PSTN (and ISDN) service in 2025, with all calls and services to be operated over IP in the future. Clarion has around 2,000 managed and operated sites within the UK, which this termination will directly affect.

Most of these ~2000 sites still utilise PSTN lines to provide services to the site. On top of voice calls other services include systems such as: alarms, EPOS systems, door entry systems, lift lines, CCTV etc. all of which need to be managed through migration and termination.

Undertaking such a change requires careful and diligent planning and execution to ensure each site is audited, fully communicated with and the new solution is implemented ahead of migration.

Due to the number of sites involved and the complex nature surrounding the full scope of the project, Clarion partnered with StableLogic to audit all 2000 sites to gain a better understanding of the challenges and risks associated with decommissioning. With this number of sites, and the potential high-risk sites such as ones that house vulnerable and elderly people, it is critical to manage this transition carefully and ahead of the deadline.

Part 1: The Audit 

Creating and managing a staged process to run the audit enabled StableLogic to take better control and engage with the right people at the right time. The StableLogic project team approached the audit with three stages:

Phase 1 - Initial audit of Veroxos and cross examination of additional data sources

• Review data held in Veroxos (StableLogic manage many of Clarion's services through Veroxos)
• Perform a data cleanse and zero usage report across all known information, producing a report at the end of this to help guide the remaining audit
• Engage with Clarion resource in order to gather a site / asset list, with a view to merge these two to create a list of sites and services

Phase 2 - Site Audit and Risk Categorisation

• Create a detailed site register, including any realistic assumptions which have been made around sites which are lacking information, and a list of priority sites for physical audit based on assumed risk
• Dependent on available time and resource, a physical audit of key priority sites could be undertaken
• Risk categorisation of sites based on set criteria, i.e., number of services, number of lifts, type of service (emergency pull alarms, lift lines, site access, CCTV) etc.

Phase 3 - Strategy Creation and Project Plan

• StableLogic built a detailed strategy that covered the different technologies available to Clarion to replace the PSTN connectivity, based on: 
  • The risk profile of sites, and services required to replace, StableLogic created a recommended strategy for each site type based on 'Impact vs Complexity'
  • The strategy for each site type will incorporate the recommended technology, resiliency, reason for availability requirements, and a cost profile + support requirements
  • Risks, issues, dependencies of the PSTN decommissioning project will all be considered as part of this deliverable
• StableLogic created a recommended Project Plan and high-level Resource Plan - sites will be grouped where possible and prioritised where required, input from Clarion will be required to understand the risk/impact tolerance and to review the proposed solution options. 
• These recommendations were presented to the Clarion Exec team, as well as organising multiple workshops with the individuals responsible for each service

Part 2: The Decommissioning

Following the completion of the audit the StableLogic team provided Clarion with a detailed presentation comprising of the recommendations, budgets, resource, risks etc. identified throughout the audit as well as a strategy associated with the full decommissioning. Throughout the project it was clear that there were four main issues that resulted in Clarion being unable to undertake their audit alone and also why they were looking to StableLogic to support them with their full decommissioning:

Throughout StableLogic’s audit of the Clarion estate, the quality of the data has been the largest area of concern. Initially starting with the data provided through Veroxos (and directly from BT, TalkTalk and Gamma), following conversations with multiple Clarion teams, there was a lot of data managed controlled and stored in different formats, quality and with different or missing information. When working through the data this caused issues when trying to develop an understanding of the overall estate and how we look to transition to future digital services.

As StableLogic have engaged with the various stakeholders across Clarion it has become increasingly evident that there are multiple solutions delivering where one may be better. For example, a number of replacement services are now using SIM technology (LTE / VoLTE), however it is unclear where these SIM cards are being purchased from and what SLTs and support packages are provided as part of the service.

Throughout the audit there has been numerous services which have had conflicting services assigned to them. When reviewing the data from Veroxos or from the ISP the purpose of service may be allocated e.g. for a Lift Line, however when cross checking the data with other Clarion provided data the service allocation is different to what is previously logged, resulting in a large amount of time taken to review and validate the data. 

With multiple business areas working without alignment from data management and storage to purchasing and ordering new services and connectivity options. The project team have identified multiple Clarion teams either preparing or currently working on implementing new solutions which are not aligned to a common strategy or aligned to delivering a cost or service optimised solution.

The Result

Although the StableLogic project team were engaged to undertake a survey of the PSTN services through out Clarion and recommend a strategy and solution for decommissioning, a lot of other information, risks and issues were discovered which lead to the team focusing not only on the PSTN services and strategy but developing a wider strategic recommendation for the control, management and implementation of all services running within Clarion that utilise some form of connectivity. StableLogic strive to delivery value and excellence for our clients, often working to accommodate our client's needs and requirements to meet and exceed their expectations.