Two new tools just live: one for big decisions, one for everyday maths
A 15-minute reality check for organisations thinking about setting up a DLO, and eight calculators that save you from yet another half-broken spreadsheet. Both went live on the platform this week.
Two new tools went live on the platform this week. They sit at opposite ends of the housing day: one for the big strategic decisions, and one for the small everyday number questions you've been doing in your head, on Post-its, or on the back of a meeting agenda for years.
Both are free. Neither needs a login. We don't capture any of your data.
DLO Readiness & Viability Assessment
If your organisation is even thinking about setting up a Direct Labour Organisation — or has decided in principle and is now nervously working out what that means in practice — this one is for you.
It's a structured reality check. 32 questions across 8 themes, around 15 minutes to complete. At the end you get a downloadable summary you can take straight to your board or steering group.
It won't tell you whether to proceed. That is your decision, your board's decision, and it depends on circumstances no questionnaire can know about. But what it will do:
- Surface the considerations you must resolve before committing
- Flag where your current position carries risk
- Give you a structured summary that holds up under scrutiny
Most DLO insourcing failures aren't caused by a bad idea. They're caused by starting before the hard questions have been answered. This is how you make sure you've answered them.
Best used while the idea is still being explored, before any formal commitment. It also works as a challenge tool once a provisional decision has been taken — a way of pressure-testing the case before the money starts moving.
Housing Calculators
Eight calculators for the everyday number questions you already do, just faster.
We kept seeing the same thing across the sector: housing professionals reaching for a phone calculator, a half-broken spreadsheet inherited from someone who left in 2019, or a colleague's desk — just to answer something straightforward. Convert weekly rent to annual. Apply a CPI uplift. Work out what a void really costs. Calculate the true costs of interim staff.
So we put the lot of it in one place. Type your figures in, the answer appears underneath. That is the whole tool.
One tip worth knowing: press Ctrl+S on a Windows machine, or Cmd+S on a Mac, with the page open, and save it to your desktop. After that, no internet needed. It opens in seconds and just works — in a meeting, on site, or when the Wi-Fi is playing up.
If there is a calculator you reach for regularly that we haven't included, tell us. This tool grows with the sector.
Where to find them
Both tools — and the rest of our toolkit — live in the Tools hub. Free to use. No login. No data collected.
Go and have a play.
