Property Manager Work Order Triage
Purpose
Triage assigns a response class from what the plumbing is doing and who else it reaches, not from how alarmed the caller sounds. A property manager relaying a tenant's words is two people away from the fixture, so the intake has to ask the questions that separate a dripping stop in one unit from a leak crossing into somebody else's ceiling. This procedure guarantees a safety screen before any scheduling question, a class assigned against stated triggers, and an access and authorization check completed before a truck rolls. Without it a shop runs its emergency crew on the loudest caller and arrives at the genuine emergency second.
Scope
Covers phone, email and portal intake of plumbing work orders from property managers, on-site managers and tenants at apartment buildings, small mixed-use properties, offices and small retail, through to dispatch and the class written on the ticket.
Does not cover the diagnosis or the repair, which belong to the trade SOP for the work. Does not cover after-hours on-call rota design or contract terms. Does not cover a gas odor call, which is answered by the gas odor call response SOP and is not triaged, it is acted on. Legal questions about entry notice and tenant rights are the property's and their attorney's, not this procedure's.
Roles and responsibilities
| Role | What they own | The handoff |
|---|---|---|
| Intake or dispatcher | The safety screen, the class, the access check and the authorization | Puts the class AND the trigger that produced it on the ticket, so a later reclassification can be argued from a reason rather than a mood |
| Property manager | Access authority, contact for other affected units, and spend authorization | Supplies a contact for the suspected source unit, which is the item most often missing and the one that turns a same-hour call into a wasted trip |
| Technician | Reclassifying from the field once they can see it | Calls the class change in with what they saw, so intake learns which questions failed to surface it |
| Lead or on-call | Accepting a same-hour dispatch and sequencing two of them | Owns the call when two calls both qualify as same-hour, so a dispatcher is never choosing between properties alone |
Procedure
Run the safety screen before any scheduling question. Ask, in this order: do you smell gas, is water reaching lights, outlets or a panel, is sewage inside a living or food space, is anyone being scalded, and has anything hot or under pressure let go. Acceptance: an explicit yes or no to each, recorded. Wrong looks like taking the address and the availability first and reaching the hazard question four minutes in. Stop rule: on a gas odor, everyone leaves the building immediately, nobody touches a switch or a garage door, no phone is used inside, and they call the gas utility from outside; that call leaves triage entirely. Hazard: this step is where you can put a caller in danger with an instruction, so never tell an untrained person to operate a gas valve, open an electrical panel or wade into standing water near energized equipment.
Establish who else the problem reaches before you classify it. Ask whether other units, other tenants or a common area are affected, whether the water appears to come from above or from a shared wall, and whether the building has one riser serving several units. Acceptance: the answer written as one unit, several units, or a shared system. Wrong looks like classifying from the fixture named, when the fixture named is in the unit that noticed, not the unit that is leaking. Stop rule: any answer other than one unit raises the class at step 4 whatever the symptom is. Hazard: none at this step, it is a question set, but this is the answer that most often changes who gets hurt and how much gets wet.
Locate the isolation and find out who can operate it. Ask where the unit shutoff and the building shutoff are, whether the caller knows how to reach them, and whether anyone on site has operated them before. Acceptance: the isolation named and a yes or no on who can reach it. Wrong looks like assuming the on-site manager can shut the building down because the last one could. Stop rule: where nobody on site can isolate and water is actively escaping, the class is same-hour regardless of the volume described, because the loss runs until a tech arrives. Hazard: only ask a caller to close a water valve, never a gas valve and never an electrical disconnect, and tell them to stop if it does not turn by hand rather than fetch a wrench.
Assign the class against the stated triggers and write the trigger down. Shop defaults, tuned to your own contracts: same-hour for active uncontrolled water, sewage in a living or food space, no water to an occupied building, or any hazard flag from step 1; same business day for a contained active leak, no hot water to occupied units, or a single blocked fixture where it is the only one; next business day for a fixture out of service with another available; scheduled within ten business days for everything else. Acceptance: one class and the trigger that produced it on the ticket. Wrong looks like a class assigned from the caller's tone, which reliably promotes the articulate caller over the flooded one. Stop rule: a shared-system answer at step 2 raises the class one level, and that raise is written as its own line so it is visible later. Hazard: none at this step, it is a decision at a desk, and getting it wrong sends the crew to the second worst call first.
Confirm access authority and the notice the property intends to give. Acceptance: named contact, phone number, how the tech gets in, and whether the tenant will be home, plus confirmation that the property has handled any entry notice. Wrong looks like a tech sent to knock on a door the property has not told anyone about. Stop rule: no access plan, no dispatch below same-hour class; on a same-hour call the tech rolls and the property is called en route rather than the loss running while paperwork catches up. Hazard: none at this step, and the legal question of what notice a tenant is owed varies by state and is the property's and their attorney's to answer, not the shop's.
Confirm the authorization before the truck rolls, in writing. Acceptance: a named authorizer and a stated limit expressed as an approved scope or a labour-hour cap, in an email, a portal entry or a text. Wrong looks like a verbal from someone who does not hold the budget, which becomes a disputed invoice a month later. Stop rule: no authorization means no non-emergency dispatch; on a same-hour call the shop dispatches on the make-safe scope only and gets the repair authorized from site. Hazard: none at this step, but a tech sent without a limit ends up negotiating in a tenant's kitchen, which is the worst place anyone has ever agreed a scope.
Capture what decides the truck load, in the caller's own observations. Ask the fixture and its age, what changed and when, what has already been tried, and whether the building is on a shared riser, a booster set or a well. Acceptance: enough detail that the tech can name the likely parts before leaving. Wrong looks like an intake note reading "leak in bathroom", which guarantees a second trip. Stop rule: where the caller cannot describe it, ask for a photograph or a short video before dispatch rather than guessing. Hazard: never ask a tenant to open, dismantle or reach into anything to answer your question; a photograph from where they are standing is all you want.
Dispatch with the class, the trigger and the access detail together. Acceptance: the tech receives class, trigger, access contact, authorization limit, and the source-unit contact where the problem crosses units. Wrong looks like a dispatch carrying only an address and a symptom, so the tech rediscovers the shared riser standing in a hallway. Stop rule: a same-hour call on a shared system is not dispatched without a contact for the suspected source unit; intake calls the property's emergency line to get one first. Hazard: none at this step, though a dispatch missing the isolation location from step 3 costs the tech the first ten minutes of an active leak.
Close the loop on every reclassification, weekly. Acceptance: a short review of every ticket whose class changed in the field, naming which intake question would have caught it. Wrong looks like treating reclassification as the tech disagreeing with the office. Stop rule: the same missed trigger appearing three times is a change to the question set at step 1 or 2, not a coaching note. Hazard: none at this step, it is a review, and skipping it is why an intake script goes five years without learning anything.
The record this produces
Per ticket: the five safety screen answers, the who-else-is-affected answer, the isolation location and who can operate it, the assigned class with its trigger and any raise, the access contact and plan, the authorization with its named authorizer and limit, and the field reclassification if there was one.
These land on the work order and on the property record. The tech reads the class, the trigger and the isolation before leaving the yard. The lead reads the trigger when two same-hour calls land together, since a trigger is arguable and a tone is not. The property manager reads the authorization line when an invoice is questioned. The office reads the reclassification log weekly, which is the only mechanism that improves the questions rather than the people answering them.
One worked pass, including a failure
Saturday afternoon, 12-unit building, on-site manager calls: a tenant in unit 2B has water coming through the ceiling.
Step 1: no gas odor, no sewage, nobody scalded, but yes, water is running down beside a ceiling light fixture. The intake tells the manager to keep everyone out of that room, not to touch the switch or the fixture, and to leave the room lights alone. That is the flag that makes step 4 a same-hour call before anything else is known.
Step 2: the source is not 2B. Water is coming from above, so unit 3B is the suspected source and this is at least two tenants. Step 3: the manager knows where the building shutoff is but has never operated it, and there is no accessible shutoff for 3B from outside the unit.
Step 4 would have produced a same-day class from the words a contained ceiling leak, and does not: the hazard flag from step 1 sets it same-hour on its own, and the shared answer at step 2 would have raised it anyway. Both are written on the ticket.
Step 8 fails. The ticket goes to the on-call tech with 2B's contact and the building address, and no contact for 3B. The stop rule catches it before the truck moves: a same-hour call on a shared system is not dispatched without a contact for the suspected source unit. Intake calls the property's emergency line, reaches the regional manager, and gets both the 3B tenant's number and authority for entry. That call adds nine minutes to the dispatch and saves the trip that would have ended at a locked door with water still running.
The tech arrives, isolates 3B at the unit branch rather than taking the building down, and finds a failed supply hose at a lavatory. Field reclassification: none. Step 9's weekly review notes that the source-unit contact was missing at intake for the second time in a month, and the intake script gains a required field for it.
References
- Your own contract terms with each property for response times and authorization limits, which govern where they differ from the shop defaults stated here.
- State and local landlord-tenant law for entry notice, which is the property's obligation and a question for their attorney rather than for the shop.
- See related: the Plumbing gas odor call response SOP, which replaces this procedure entirely on a gas call, the shared riser shutdown and tenant notification SOP for anything needing the riser down, and the sewage backup response SOP.