How Roundhouse Found a Maintenance Platform Built for the People Doing the Work
Intro
Roundhouse is a growing multifamily portfolio with properties across multiple markets. At the corporate level, Ryan Harris serves as Facilities Manager, overseeing all maintenance operations company-wide. With a background rooted in maintenance work, Ryan has spent his career watching the industry evolve, from paper work orders to the software landscape of today. After years in the field, Ryan knew the difference between software built for maintenance people and everything else.
After demoing six products and finding that none of them met the mark, Ryan landed on AppWork. Six months in, the results are clear: the team is more unified, more accountable, and genuinely excited about the tools they use every day.
A Team Ready for the Right Tool
Before AppWork, Roundhouse's maintenance teams were split across multiple systems. Work orders lived in one place. Preventative maintenance lived in another. The result was as you can imagine: technicians defaulted to whichever system felt most familiar, preventative maintenance tasks went undocumented, and accountability was inconsistent.
Ryan describes the challenge plainly: accountability varied widely across the portfolio, and without documentation to back anything up, there was no consistent source of truth to point to.
The challenge wasn't effort or commitment. It was infrastructure. With teams split across multiple systems, there was no single place where everything lived, and that made consistency hard to maintain at scale.
The Search
Ryan took the evaluation process seriously. He demoed six products before AppWork, coming away from each with the same impression: they felt dated, harder to navigate than they needed to be, and not built with the end user in mind. As someone who came up through the maintenance side of the industry, he was looking for something that felt like it was built for the people actually using it.
AppWork was the last call he made.
"As soon as I got in there and saw the gamification, I thought that was appealing and would be a really good way of pulling in interest." — Ryan Harris, Facilities Manager
Challenges Faced
The interface was cleaner. The logic was intuitive. And unlike some other options on the market, where support comes with a price tag attached to every interaction, AppWork felt like a genuine partner.
"Not only does AppWork have what I think is probably the best platform out there right now, but they have the service to match it, so it was like, I got it all." — Ryan Harris, Facilities Manager
The Discovery
What stood out most in Ryan's evaluation was that AppWork was built to serve everyone in the organization, not just property managers.
The gamification layer gave technicians a reason to engage. The reporting and analytics tools gave Ryan the corporate-level visibility he had been missing. The inspections module created a documentation trail that made accountability real rather than assumed. And the roadmap, including call management, asset tracking, and due diligence features, showed a platform thinking about the full scope of maintenance operations.
"Once the analytics start to build in there, it offers something to really everybody in the organization." — Ryan Harris, Facilities Manager
The Solution
Roundhouse piloted AppWork on a handful of properties before rolling it out company-wide in November 2025. Since then, the most meaningful shift has been consolidation. Instead of managing work orders in one system and preventative maintenance in another, the team now has one place for everything."One space. I can see it all. I can access the communities with ease." — Ryan Harris, Facilities Manager
That visibility has changed how Ryan manages at the corporate level. The amount of oversight he has access to today is, in his words, "huge." Where he once had to accept teams' verbal assurances with limited documentation to support them, he now has a clear, real-time picture of what is happening across the portfolio.
The inspection and preventative maintenance capabilities have had the most direct impact on accountability. Work that was previously tracked inconsistently now has a documented record. The expectation is visible, the completion is visible, and the ownership is clear.
The Implementation
As with any company-wide technology rollout, adoption was gradual. But the pattern Ryan has seen across the portfolio is consistent: early hesitation gives way to genuine buy-in once the team is in the platform and using it.
"A lot of those folks have all since come around and been like, this is actually pretty good." — Ryan Harris, Facilities Manager
Most technicians have fully moved away from their previous property management system (PMS) for maintenance tasks and are now using AppWork for work orders and recurring schedules. For teams using the Make Ready Board, the benefit is clear: turns are tracked, progress is visible, and nothing falls through the cracks between units. Ryan and the regional team are continuing to expand adoption across the portfolio, with more features on the near-term horizon.
Results
Six months into a full rollout, the results at Roundhouse point in a clear direction.
Team morale around maintenance technology has shifted noticeably. Before AppWork, managing technology adoption required significant time and energy. Since the move to AppWork, that dynamic has largely disappeared.
"Since getting into AppWork, I'm really not getting that. A couple of the guys pushed back a little at the start, but a lot of those folks have since come around." — Ryan Harris, Facilities Manager
Technician engagement has grown alongside the platform's gamification features. Ryan has seen techs checking the performance leaderboard and pushing themselves to keep up with their peers. One technician called him specifically to ask how a colleague had accumulated so many points. A team in Montana won both the Winter Award and the Spring Award, and their immediate response was: "We got to get the next one."
That kind of pride is not something software creates on its own. But AppWork gave it somewhere to land.
"It would seem that they're being more intentional and that the guy ahead of them on the board is what is driving it." — Ryan Harris, Facilities Manager
Overall Experience
Ryan's endorsement of AppWork is unambiguous.
"I'm a huge supporter. Everybody that I talk to within the industry that wants to talk shop, we talk about AppWork." — Ryan Harris, Facilities Manager
"Not only does AppWork have what I think is the best platform out there right now, but they have the service to match it." — Ryan Harris, Facilities Manager
Roundhouse is continuing to deepen its use of AppWork, with Make Ready Board adoption, call management, asset tracking, and due diligence features on the near-term roadmap. As regional managers come on board and the platform becomes the standard across the portfolio, the foundation Ryan built in the first six months will continue to pay off.
For Ryan, the clearest signal that AppWork is the right tool is simple: the teams that were most resistant at the start are now the ones providing praise. In maintenance, that is not a small thing.