On May 6, the prestigious Public Technology Institute (PTI) honored NYCHA with three distinguished awards at its 2007 Technology Leadership Conference in Denver CO. NYCHA won top honors in the large government sustainability category with a Solutions Award for its Smart Building Technology. This initiative encompasses the Computerized Heating Automated System (CHAS) and the Housing Authority Remote Monitoring System (HARMS).

CHAS will provide for the remote monitoring and management of NYCHA’s 195 major central heating plants through a web-based software on its wide area network. HARMS will bring the benefits of remote monitoring and management to NYCHA’s formidable elevator fleet.

In PTI’s Telecommunications and IT category, NYCHA received two Significant Achievement Awards, one for the Centralized Call Center (CCC) Change Management Initiative and the other for the Virtual IT Project Management Office (PMO).

The CCC provides residents with the convenience of scheduling routine maintenance work by phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Scheduling work requests improves productivity as well as service to residents, since fewer repeat repair calls are necessary when residents can plan to be home.

HARMS will bring the benefits of remote monitoring and management to NYCHA’s elevator fleet. Approximately one-third of NYCHA’s 3,334 elevators will be operational with remote monitoring by the end of 2007, yielding an annual savings of $600,000.

The virtual PMO ensures that NYCHA’s IT investments are aligned with its business strategies and goals. It also standardizes and supports the decentralization of project management by providing templates and other tools that help managers organize tasks and comply with NYCHA project methodology.