In this article...
Project at a Glance
| Company | The Scion Group — one of the largest student housing operators in the world |
| Portfolio | Approximately 150 properties nationwide |
| Assets tracked | HVAC systems, refrigerators, dryers, exhaust fans and other in-unit appliances |
| Users | 600 field users company-wide |
| Technology | GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking, QR code asset tags, mobile app, web-app |
| Implementation timeline | October 2025 to January 2026 (live January 12, 2026), phased in stages |
| Results | Verified PM completion; zero HVAC leaks this summer at properties with previously recurring leaks; fewer HVAC replacements year over year |
| Financial | Roughly 60% of restoration work orders traced to missed PM; a projected 25% to 30% reduction in restoration costs would represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings |
Introduction
GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking was implemented across The Scion Group, one of the largest student housing owner-operators in the world, at the direction of the company’s facilities leadership. The goal was to build the company’s first genuinely trackable preventative maintenance (PM) program — one that could confirm not only that work had been assigned, but that it had actually been carried out on the asset.
The rollout was phased across roughly six months, beginning with company-wide asset tagging in October 2025 and going live on January 12, 2026. Scion trained 500 to 600 field users across a six-month phased rollout.
The Client
The Scion Group manages approximately 150 student housing properties across the United States. This case study focuses on the Gulf Coast region, overseen by Michael Hutsell, Regional Facilities Manager, who is responsible for 27 properties spanning Fayetteville, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.
At each property, a facilities manager, two to three technicians and a porter or housekeeper are responsible for maintaining the asset base and caring for residents. The assets under management include HVAC systems, refrigerators, dryers, exhaust fans and other appliances, alongside plumbing, electrical, grounds and large capital projects.
Student housing runs on a relentless cycle. As Michael puts it, “it’s go-go in student housing — there’s never a slow period.” Even after move-out, teams are immediately preparing for turn and flipping as many apartments as possible.
The Challenge
Before GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking, Scion generated recurring PM work orders through Entrata, the platform used to manage residents, work orders and inspections. Work orders populated on a quarterly cycle with instructions for the PMs due that period.
The problem was not assigning the work — it was verifying it. Entrata does not require photos or notes in order to close a work order, so a task could be marked complete without any evidence that it had been performed.
As Michael describes it: “A lot of times the staff would do the work but not close it out, or not do the work and not close it out, or just close it out and not do the work at all. There was no real way to track whether preventative maintenance had been completed on site.”
That gap was expensive. Missed preventative maintenance resurfaced downstream as reactive restoration work — HVAC leaks, appliance leaks and water damage. At The Scion Group, roughly 60% of restoration work orders were traced back to preventative maintenance that was never completed. This contributed to one of the highest restoration and repair cost periods in the company’s recent history, a figure he describes as running into the millions and compounded by a period of rapid property acquisition.
Focus
Scion wanted a system that could do two things at once: track the full lifecycle of a physical asset — including model and serial numbers — and verify that preventative maintenance tasks had genuinely been completed against that asset in the field.
The company had been working on a company-wide PM program for roughly two years as its facilities function matured within a historically operations-heavy business. Several alternatives were considered. Most could track what a crew did inside an apartment, but none could track the asset itself. Scion evaluated multiple platforms. Only GoCodes Asset Tracking tracked asset lifecycle, model and serial numbers, and PM history in a single system.
Prior to Utilizing GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking
The Scion Group experienced:
- No verifiable way to confirm preventative maintenance had been completed
- Work orders closed out without supporting photos or notes
- Approximately 60% of restoration work orders stemming from missed PM
- High and rising restoration, remediation and repair costs
- Recurring HVAC and appliance leaks driving water damage
- No central record of asset model and serial numbers
- HVAC assessments requiring staff to walk every apartment and issue 24-hour resident notices
- A reactive rather than proactive maintenance posture
The Solution
GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking gives facilities teams an enterprise-scale system for tracking assets across large, distributed property portfolios — from HVAC systems to appliances — and for managing the preventative maintenance performed on them.
Every in-scope asset at Scion was tagged with a unique custom QR code asset tag, including HVAC systems, dryers, exhaust fans and refrigerators. Technicians scan the tag with the GoCodes Asset Tracking mobile app, which opens the asset record and serves the PM tasks due for completion. Because GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking requires photos and notes in order to close a task, PM completion is finally provable — the verification layer Scion had been missing.
Scion deployed the system in phases and trained the entire organization together rather than cascading top-down, so that teams learned the platform as one:
- October 2025 — a company-wide call launched asset tagging across all appliances and HVAC equipment.
- December 2025 — a session walking through the PM workflow: scan the tag, open the asset, complete the assigned task.
- January 2026 — pre-launch training, official go-live on January 12, and additional launch-day training.
- February to March 2026 — regional facilities managers ran deeper-dive sessions, resolved bottlenecks and maintained ongoing check-ins.
Many of Scion’s mid-rise properties have connectivity dead zones in hallways, parking garages and inside units, where signal often reaches only the leasing office. GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking’s offline mode — available across the web, iOS and Android apps — allows technicians to complete their work without a signal and sync once they reconnect. “A hundred percent, it’s changed,” Michael says. “Our teams have been able to complete everything they need to do in GoCodes Asset Tracking across every single property.”
Before and After
| Before GoCodes Asset Tracking | With GoCodes Asset Tracking | |
|---|---|---|
| PM verification | No photos or notes required to close | Photos and notes required to close |
| Asset lookup | Dispatch a tech to walk the unit | Pull model and serial in seconds |
| HVAC assessment | Walk every apartment, 24-hour resident notices, manual data collection | Run a report or look it up |
| Offline capability | Available in Entrata | Available across all platforms since March 2026 |
Results
Since implementing GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking, The Scion Group has seen a definitive change:
- Verified preventative maintenance: Required photos and notes mean PM completion can be confirmed rather than assumed — closing the accountability gap that drove restoration costs.
- HVAC leaks eliminated at treated properties: Several properties report no leaks at all so far this summer in buildings that previously experienced leaks every year. Michael describes the shift from weekly leaks to occasional ones as “game-changing.”
- Fewer equipment replacements: Fayetteville has replaced noticeably fewer HVAC systems this spring and summer compared with the same period last year.
- Instant access to asset data: Model and serial numbers for any asset at any property are available in seconds. “We have it at the palm of our hands,” Michael says. “Beforehand, we didn’t have that.”
- HVAC assessments transformed: What once required walking every apartment, issuing 24-hour resident notices and hand-collecting data for the capital team is now a report or a lookup — saving days or even weeks of work.
- Field usability in low-signal buildings: Offline mode allows crews to complete PM tasks in hallways, garages and units where there is no connectivity.
- A proactive maintenance culture: Teams have shifted from reacting to weekly failures to getting ahead of them. “Anytime you’re reactive versus proactive, you’re never really getting anywhere,” Michael says.
- Company-wide adoption: Corporate leadership, regional facilities managers and on-site facilities managers across the country all report the same improvements.
Future Outlook
With asset tagging complete and PM cycles running company-wide, Scion expects the financial impact to become clearly measurable over the next six to twelve months as restoration, appliance, HVAC and dryer-vent replacement costs are assessed year over year.
Michael notes that a 25 to 30% reduction in Scion’s restoration spend would save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, potentially approaching a million in savings over time, before accounting for the equipment that no longer needs replacing. Reflecting on how far the teams have come, he puts it simply: “We really were in the stone age compared to where we’re going now.”
FAQ
What was preventative maintenance costing The Scion Group before GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking?
Because there was no way to verify that PM tasks were actually completed, missed maintenance resurfaced as expensive reactive restoration work. Roughly 60% of restoration work orders traced back to preventative maintenance that had not been performed, contributing to one of the company’s highest restoration and repair cost periods in recent years.
How does GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking verify that preventative maintenance was actually completed?
Every asset carries a QR code tag. A technician scans the tag with the GoCodes Asset Tracking mobile app, which opens the asset record and presents the PM tasks due. GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking requires photos and notes in order to close the task, so there is documented evidence that the work was performed on the specific asset — something Scion’s previous system did not enforce.
How did GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking work at properties with no mobile signal?
Many of Scion’s mid-rise properties have no connectivity in hallways, parking garages or inside apartments. GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking’s offline mode, available across the web, iOS and Android apps, allows field teams to scan assets and complete their PM tasks without a signal, syncing automatically once they reconnect.
How long did implementation take across 200 properties?
Scion phased the rollout over roughly six months. Asset tagging began in October 2025, the PM workflow was introduced in December, and the system went live company-wide on January 12, 2026 for 150 to 200 field users, followed by deeper-dive regional training through February and March.
GoCodes Asset Tracking Asset Tracking
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