Community technician, Lucy Hazelwood, is noticing a trend. Demand for her repair service is dropping away and Lucy is delighted!
Her carefully kept records show a dramatic change in her tasks. Maintenance and software-related tasks now make up the bulk of her workload compared to a year ago where the majority of her time was spent fixing “old banger” networks and computers.
“Repair work made up around 90 percent of my time,” says Lucy.
Now between her six Poverty Bay schools, repair and maintenance only takes up around 32 percent of her time.
“These statistics are proof that this project (Community Technicians’ project) is working.”
Lucy collects her data from her invoice-style pads, which were professionally printed and have tick boxes of pre-set tasks listed. Variations or additional tasks as well as action and recommendation notes can also be made on the pad. Produced in triplicate, the original is left with the school, the first copy is sent to the lead school’s principal Kim Nikora from Te Karaka Primary, and Lucy keeps the second copy.
The pads not only provides an overview for the milestone reports of what Lucy is spending her time on but they also give clarity to the schools over Lucy’s service and billing. This lessens the risk of mistakes and disputes.
In parallel with the drop in repairs is an increase in Lucy’s planning and consultation tasks with teachers, who had previously avoided using ICT because of its unreliability.
“Now that we’ve moved from fixing to using the stuff, they’re coming to me at the end of term saying ‘next year or term I want to do this with my class, can you arrange this.’ So I end up moving printers, computers, installing software and getting even the most techno phobic teachers excited.”
Principal, Kim Nikora says the Community Technicians’ project has been a tremendous success and is invaluable to the schools in the area who are now actually using the ICT
“We’ve seen the difference the project has made to these schools. They know that the support is there in the form of Lucy” says Kim
For Lucy, being a Comtec is a fulltime passion, and she has the stats to prove it. In the average week she works 25 hours at the schools, drives nine hours between the schools, and studies a minimum of 30 hours. In between her Comtec commitments, Lucy raises her brood of six children which include 11-year-old triplets.
With her life full to bursting, graduation day cannot come soon enough for Lucy who is looking forward to easing up on the study. At this stage Lucy has decided against starting her own business and will continue on with working for the schools on the same basis post July 20.
