December 2017 - Skilled intern to join Dwell in January 2018

The Department of Internal Affairs run an annual Community Internship Programme which provides grants for community organisations to employ skilled workers as interns. Grants are used to pay people while they are away from their own workplace doing the community internship. 

Dwell applied this year to employ Ingrid Downey from Housing New Zealand, who is a Technical Advisor in their Business Advisory Team and we were successful which was brilliant news!

Through the internship programme we wanted to engage a specialist from the social housing sector to assist Dwell with our asset management systems and strategies. An asset management strategy is a critical business tool for us to align our property assets with our strategic goals, including the need to provide more homes. We certainly have that expertise with Ingrid. Her background and knowledge after 9 years with Housing NZ, and before that working in housing in the US, will be invaluable to Dwell. 

We are also incredibly excited to be able to partner with Housing NZ in this way. We hope too that what we achieve will have benefits for the wider community housing sector as well.

The three objectives of the internships are:
• Review the asset management policies, guides and decision-making documents used by Dwell to identify opportunities to strengthen our asset management competencies.
• Develop an asset management strategy that directs Dwell in how to maintain and enhance our existing properties to support long asset life, health enhancing features to benefit the tenants, and guidance on asset decision-making over time.
• Identify additional resources and development of the asset strategies so that work can continue after the internship ends, recognising that this will be an on-going work for Dwell.