There’s a well-worn phrase in property maintenance circles: the job you plan for is rarely the job you find. Any engineer or tradesperson who has ever turned up to a repair without knowing the full history of a property, a tenant’s previous concerns, or a safety warning that was logged three visits ago, will tell you that the gap between what you expect and what you encounter can be costly. Costly in terms of time, in repeat visits, and occasionally in complaints that were entirely avoidable.
That gap is what Totalmobile set out to close. And thanks to a six-month pilot with Fortem Solutions, we now have compelling proof that AI Snapshot, the first Applied Intelligence capability to enter production on our Field First platform, is doing exactly that.
Too Many Systems, Not Enough Connection
Let’s set the scene. The social housing sector is not, to put it diplomatically, having an easy time of it.
Sector-wide repair and maintenance spending reached £10 billion in 2025. In real terms, that’s up 42% compared to pre-pandemic levels. That extraordinary figure reflects the collision of higher tenant expectations, new regulatory demands, and an ageing housing stock that has been, in many cases, under-invested for years. Legislation such as Awaab’s Law has raised the bar for housing standards, mandating that landlords investigate and rectify reported damp and mould issues within strict timeframes.
The regulatory environment is tightening too. Interventions from the Housing Ombudsman increased to over 21,000 instances in a single year, up from 7,000 the year before, with repairs consistently cited as the most complained-about aspect of housing provider operations.
The Regulator of Social Housing is clear: landlords must have comprehensive, up-to-date data about the condition of every home, using it strategically to identify issues proactively and address them promptly.
And yet, for many operatives and subcontracted trade teams arriving at a property, the full picture of that property — its history, its safety warnings, its unresolved issues — has historically required navigating multiple systems, or worse, it simply wasn’t available at the point it was needed most.
THAT’S THE PROBLEM. AND IT’S ONE THE INDUSTRY CAN NO LONGER AFFORD TO IGNORE.
Enter AI Snapshot
Fortem Solutions have built a reputation as one of the most capable and trusted social housing maintenance providers in the UK. Annually, they complete 400,000 repairs in occupied homes across more than 40 social housing clients, while turning around 10,000 vacant properties for future occupancy.
When Totalmobile announced AI Snapshot, Fortem were among the first to put it to use. Over a six-month pilot, AI Snapshot was deployed across both Fortem’s in-house Smart Hub team and their subcontracted trade teams. By the time the pilot matured, it was used across roughly one in five jobs. This gave us a genuinely robust view of how our AI field service management features perform in real-world, high-volume conditions.
The results? The Smart Hub team described themselves as “two thumbs up” and said they would be grateful to see it rolled out further. The trade teams’ verdict was equally warm, and perhaps even more telling for the simplicity it signals:
“A five-year-old could use it.”
What AI Snapshot Does in a Housing Context
AI Snapshot is embedded directly within our Job Management capability of the Field First platform. Rather than arriving as a bolt-on or a separate screen to navigate, it surfaces automatically at the point it’s needed. It does this by presenting operatives and planners with a clear, AI-generated summary of everything Totalmobile’s Job Management capability knows about a property and the customers within it.
In seconds, not minutes, teams gain a high-level summary covering property history, tenant context, safety warnings, outstanding concerns, and key job insights.
The intelligence lives inside the workflow, not beside it.
As Fortem’s teams put it in their own words, the goal was to
“use the information we have in Totalmobile’s Job Management capability to create a high-level summary of everything we know about a property and our customers within seconds”
— enabling staff and trades to have better-informed customer engagements and make better operational decisions day to day by having quicker access to key information.
What the Pilot Delivered
The numbers from Fortem’s pilot are hard to argue with.
AI Snapshot saved between 10 and 15 minutes on every job it was used for. In isolation, that sounds manageable. But Fortem completes 400,000 repairs annually. When time savings of that scale compound across a workforce of in-house technicians and subcontractors, the operational and financial impact becomes genuinely transformational.
The pilot also produced outcomes that go beyond raw efficiency. In-house and trade teams entered every property fully informed and ready to complete the right work the first time, dramatically reducing repeat visits. And with repeat visits reduced, the compound benefits ripple outward:
– greater organisational efficiency
– improved overall customer satisfaction
– meaningful cost savings.
The Smart Hub team captured it well: AI Snapshot is
“driving a better client/customer experience and is far more efficient than having someone scrolling through the data, and potentially missing something important.”
That last phrase is worth sitting with. Potentially missing something important. In social housing —where missed safety warnings can have serious consequences, and where the Regulator expects landlords to proactively use data to protect tenants — the value of an AI that ensures critical information is never overlooked is not just operational. It’s a compliance story too.
The Bigger Platform Picture
AI Snapshot for housing is accessed through Field First’s Job Management capability. This is the first time Applied Intelligence has entered live production within Field First’s work order management and vertical solutions for Property and FM, and it signals clearly where things are heading.
Field First is built on eight core principles, with AI sitting at the heart of them. The platform’s architecture is designed to support machine learning and predictive analytics that identify hidden patterns and recommend timely interventions. AI Snapshot is where that ambition becomes reality on the ground.
As Gareth Tolerton, Product Innovation Director at Totalmobile, has noted:
“This is the first step in a longer journey. Throughout 2026, we’ll continue to introduce intelligence thoughtfully, ensuring it delivers clear value without adding complexity for our customers.”
Today, AI Snapshot summarises and surfaces property and tenant context at the moment it matters most. Tomorrow, as the Field First platform continues its evolution, the ambition is for AI to not just surface insights, but to recommend and automate actions, creating an intelligent layer that spans the full arc of housing maintenance and repairs delivery.
For a sector that is being asked to do more, to a higher standard, with more scrutiny than ever before, that kind of capability isn’t a nice-to-have.
It’s a strategic imperative.
What Comes Next
Following the success of the pilot, staff in the field and back at base now gain instant, AI-generated summaries of property history, tenant context, safety warnings, and key job insights — all in seconds, as a standard part of how they operate.
We are proud to see Fortem unlocking real value as early adopters, and prouder still of what the results represent: proof that Applied Intelligence, delivered thoughtfully and embedded where the work actually happens, can make a tangible, measurable difference to how housing maintenance is delivered.
The days of scrolling for context, missing a critical note, or arriving unprepared for what a property holds are, for Fortem’s teams, behind them. If you’d like to find out how AI Snapshot could work for your organisation, we’d love to show you.
See AI Snapshot and the Field First platform in action. Book your demo with Totalmobile today.
