Running the centre
Org chart and shift
A residence's org chart is the map of roles (management, reception, maintenance, kitchen, housekeeping) and of who holds each one; the shift says who is on duty in each time slot. Together they answer the question that matters when a message comes in: whose job is it right now.
Also known asorganisation chart · rota · duty roster · on-call
How it is used in a residence
In a residence the org chart on paper says little. The one that matters is the working one: which role handles faults, who runs the dining hall, who takes in the parcels and who decides when something falls outside the rules. The shift rota adds the time: the night porter, the technician who has the weekend off, the receptionist covering for a colleague on holiday.
Both break in the same place: sick leave, a holiday or a shift swap that nobody writes down. The role still shows as covered and there is nobody behind it. That is why absences and delegations are as much part of the org chart as the names. It is what the maintenance ticket uses to know where to go, and what decides where a case moves up to in a handoff to a human. How Bedel routes it: escalation to people.
Worth knowing
What people take for granted: that alerting everyone is safer than alerting one person. In practice, a message to a group is a message to nobody, because everyone assumes someone else is taking it. What is safe is a name, a time and a rule for what happens if that person does not answer.
Sources
Related terms
- Maintenance ticketA maintenance ticket is the record of a fault in a residence's facilities (a dripping shower, a broken blind) with what is wrong, where, who reported it and when. It is used to assign the job to whoever fixes it, track the deadline and keep a record of how it was closed.
- SLAAn SLA (service level agreement) is a written commitment to the time and quality with which a service is delivered. In a student residence it usually sets how many hours a maintenance ticket has to be picked up or resolved by type, and it is what decides what counts as overdue.
- Handoff to a humanA handoff to a human is passing a conversation from the AI assistant to a member of staff, because the person asks for it or because the matter needs a decision. Done well, it reaches a specific phone with the context and, if nobody answers, moves up to the person in charge.