The “one team” myth in property maintenance

Ryan Cooper • January 04, 2026 08:58

I used to think “one team” was the grown-up answer to property upkeep: one number to call, one van on the drive, one invoice at the end. In practice, multi-trade maintenance often becomes the perfect stage for coordination failures - not because people can’t do the work, but because the work is threaded: access, sequencing, parts, permits, promises.

You feel it most when the job is ordinary. A leak under the sink, a dodgy light in the hallway, a bit of mould in the corner bedroom. The sort of thing that shouldn’t eat two weeks of emails and three half-days off work.

I’ve watched the same story play out in managing agents’ offices and homeowners’ WhatsApp threads: everyone is “on it”, but no one is holding it.

The promise of “one team” - and why it sells

The pitch is clean. Instead of chasing a plumber, then a spark, then a decorator, you get a single provider who “covers everything”. They’ll “manage it end-to-end”. They’ll “coordinate the trades”. Your brain exhales.

And sometimes it works brilliantly. A small, stable crew with a proper supervisor, decent stock of common parts, and enough slack in the diary to handle surprises can feel like a miracle. The problem is that the phrase “one team” is used far more often than the operating model exists.

What you’re often buying is not one team. You’re buying a chain.

What “one team” often really means on the ground

In many property maintenance setups, “multi-trade” doesn’t mean a tight unit. It means a front door (the maintenance company) with a back room full of subcontractors, each with their own schedules, priorities, and appetite for small, fiddly jobs.

That’s not inherently bad. Specialists matter. The pain comes when nobody owns the joins: the handovers, the dependencies, the “before you can do X, someone must do Y”.

A quick reality list of where it frays:

Access: keys, tenants, concierge hours, parking restrictions, lift bookings.
Sequencing: plaster before paint, isolation before electrics, drying time before flooring.
Parts: who orders, who stores, who returns, who absorbs the wrong item.
Standards: “make safe” versus “fix”, cosmetic finish versus functional patch.
Information: photos that don’t show scale, vague defect reports, missing previous notes.

When those are managed well, multi-trade maintenance feels smooth. When they aren’t, you get the modern maintenance experience: plenty of activity, little progress.

The small job that turns into a calendar problem

A landlord in Birmingham told me about a “simple bathroom fan replacement” in a flat with a tenant who works nights. The maintenance firm booked “the electrician” for a Tuesday morning, no access arranged beyond “tenant aware”.

The electrician arrived, couldn’t get in, left. The firm rebooked, this time for a Thursday afternoon. Tenant was asleep, didn’t answer. Third booking stuck, but the electrician then refused to touch it because the ducting was damaged and “that’s not my scope”. A handyman came later, patched the ducting, but didn’t have the right fan. Another electrician visit followed.

Nobody was lazy. Nobody was malicious. It was just a baton relay where the baton kept being dropped.

The hidden cost wasn’t the fan. It was the coordination.

Coordination failures have a shape - learn to recognise it

Once you’ve seen a few, you notice patterns. They’re less about skill and more about system design.

1) Ambiguous ownership

If you can’t answer “who is accountable for the whole outcome?” you’re going to end up managing it yourself. The person answering the phone may be lovely, but loveliness isn’t ownership.

Look for language like “we’ll try to fit you in” and “I’ll message the engineer”. It’s not a red flag on its own, but it’s a sign the centre of gravity is elsewhere.

2) The diary drives the diagnosis

A proper maintenance process diagnoses, then schedules. A broken one schedules, then diagnoses at the door.

That’s how you get the wrong trade dispatched first, followed by a second visit “with parts”, followed by a third because the first two didn’t have the authority to approve the extra work.

3) Multi-trade becomes multi-visit

If the business model depends on short appointments, you’ll get short appointments. The job that needs three hours of messy, careful work is squeezed into 45 minutes, and the “finish” is deferred to the next slot that never quite lines up.

This is why tenants start sounding paranoid: they’re not. They’re just tired of living inside someone else’s scheduling algorithm.

How to make multi-trade maintenance work (without becoming the project manager)

You don’t need to micromanage trades, but you do need a few guardrails that force coordination to happen.

Ask three questions upfront

“Who is responsible for the entire job, start to finish?” Get a name, not a department.
“What’s the sequence of works?” Even a rough plan surfaces dependencies.
“What could block the first visit?” Access, isolation, parking, parts, tenant availability.

If they can’t answer, it doesn’t mean they’re useless. It means the system is thin - and you’ll feel it later.

Use a “single brief” that’s actually usable

Most maintenance requests fail at the brief. A good brief reduces the back-and-forth and prevents the wrong person being sent.

Include:

exact location (room, wall, height if relevant)
what “done” looks like (e.g., “fan replaced and duct secured; no rattling; grille fitted”)
clear access constraints (tenant shifts, concierge, permits, parking)
two photos: one wide for context, one close for detail

It’s boring. It saves days.

Pay for the thing you actually want: responsibility

If you want one team, you’re not paying for a wider menu of trades. You’re paying for someone to take responsibility across trades.

That may look like:

a supervisor who attends the first visit for complex jobs
bundled “make-good” included, not argued over later
a commitment to a single visit where possible (longer slot, better prep)
written scope that includes finishing, not just fixing

Cheap multi-trade maintenance is often cheap because it externalises coordination onto you, the tenant, or the managing agent. The invoice is smaller; the disruption is not.

The quiet upgrade: treat maintenance like a system, not a series of favours

The most effective property teams I’ve seen do one unglamorous thing well: they run maintenance like operations. They track repeat issues, they standardise common repairs, and they don’t pretend every job is an isolated event.

A tiny shift helps: stop asking “who can do this?” and start asking “how will this be delivered?” The latter exposes whether “one team” is real or just branding.

Here’s a compact way to think about it:

What you’re told	What to check	What it prevents
“We cover all trades”	Who owns the whole job?	Endless handovers
“We can send someone tomorrow”	Will they have parts/authority?	Diagnosis-only visits
“It’s standard”	What’s included in ‘finish’?	Decoration disputes