A tenant in a UK apartment building reports a broken dishwasher. It seems like a small thing, the kind of request that should take a phone call and a visit from a repair technician. Instead, it can take months to resolve, and along the way it quietly passes through dozens of hands and racks up hundreds of pounds in costs that never show up on the final invoice.
That gap, between how simple a repair request looks and how complicated it actually is, is the subject of this piece: what really happens after someone reports a broken appliance, and why the coordination behind the scenes, not the labor or the parts, has become the biggest cost driver in keeping a building running.
Behind a Simple Request
According to Sergey Nasonov, CTO and Co-Founder of Tytan, a company that builds software for facilities management firms, the coordination triggered by even the most routine maintenance request is far more complex, and far more expensive, than most building owners realize.
“It’s just incredible how many people a simple repair request touches,” Nasonov says. “It’s binary. My thing doesn’t work. Can you please fix it? And it triggers like dozens of people and hundreds of pounds.”
Nasonov walks through what actually happens after a request comes in. Someone has to send clarifying questions and wait for answers. A scheduler has to find a technician with the right skills, check their availability, factor in travel time, confirm the building allows access at that time, and check what the technician is allowed to charge. The technician then has to deal with parking, the possibility that no one lets them into the unit, and the chance that a needed part isn’t on hand, which means coming back another day. Once the work is done, someone has to write up a report of what was fixed and send a bill. Each of those steps involves a different person and a different system, and each one is a place where things can go wrong.
Safety Rules Add Delays
The complications don’t stop at scheduling and billing. Nasonov points to his own experience with a smart meter installation as an example of how safety rules can stall a job that should be quick. A contractor arrived to install the meter but couldn’t finish, because safety rules require a second person to hold the ladder for any work done above about three feet off the ground, and no one else was there to do it.
The fallout was immediate. Nasonov estimates the technician lost 60 to 70 percent of a bonus tied to fixing problems on the first visit. A second visit had to be scheduled. A complaint was filed. The technician had photos proving what had happened, but that evidence never made it to the people who needed to see it.
“If we use the proper communication, then he would be able to get more money and just move on with the job,” Nasonov says. The issue isn’t that any one person dropped the ball, it’s that important information routinely doesn’t reach the people who need it.
Not Indifference, Just Complexity
For tenants who wait months for a basic repair, the natural conclusion is that no one cares. Nasonov disagrees. In his experience, the people working in facilities management, technicians, schedulers, help desk staff, and administrators, are generally motivated and trying to do their jobs well. The delays come from how complicated the system is, not from indifference.
“The misconception is that when your dishwasher is not getting fixed or replaced within four or five months, you think, oh, people just don’t care, they’re just lazy,” Nasonov says. “I don’t think so. I think people care and they strive to work to help others and they’re being compassionate. But it just naturally takes time.”
Nasonov has lived this himself. He waited four to five months for a dishwasher to be replaced in his own home, and separately dealt with delays fixing a washing machine and a refrigerator. Having since built software for this industry, he says he now understands why those delays happen, though that understanding hasn’t made the problem feel any less serious.
If the extra coordination behind a routine repair really does cost hundreds of pounds and involve dozens of people, then the true cost of maintaining a building is much higher than most owners realize. The technician’s pay shows up on an invoice. The cost of everyone coordinating around that technician usually doesn’t.
Where Automation Comes In
The fix Nasonov points to isn’t a new technician or a better dispatcher. It’s narrower than that: take the steps in this chain that involve no real decision, just tracking whether something arrived and following up when it didn’t, and let a system handle them instead of a person. The judgment calls, weighing circumstances, managing a client relationship, stay with people.
That distinction matters because of where the paperwork bottleneck actually sits. A facilities company can’t bill its client until it can prove the work was done, so a missing report doesn’t just delay an invoice, it delays payment. The timing of a follow-up also isn’t uniform. A quick repair might warrant a reminder within a day or two, while a job that requires a formal inspection report needs more time before anyone starts chasing it. Handling that distinction consistently, across every open job, is exactly the kind of task that’s tedious for a person and straightforward for a system.
The stakes for getting this right go beyond convenience. Nasonov says that in the UK, failing to document completed repairs and flag required follow-ups on healthcare facility contracts can result in fines of several million pounds from the client. In that context, a missing form isn’t paperwork friction, it’s a direct financial risk sitting downstream of a process most people never see.
About the Expert: Sergey Nasonov is CTO and Co-Founder of Titan, a UK-based AI company focused on automating administrative workflows in facility management, with 25 automated modules built to date.
This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed herein reflect those of the individuals quoted and do not represent an endorsement of any company, product, or service mentioned. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and consult qualified professionals before making any investment decisions.
