A day in the life of an empty homes data analyst

Hi all,

I’m a data analyst for the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership at Shelter Scotland.

My job is to help local authorities, and all others involved in empty homes work, adopt a strategic and data-driven approach to getting empty homes back into use.

No two days are the same so it’s difficult to offer a “day in the life”. Instead, I’d like to describe a “glimpse into the life” of a data analyst at SEHP.

If I’m working from home, I usually start my workday with a gallon of tea and a podcast out on my flat balcony.

Lately, I’ve been into podcasts about scams, fraud, and Munchausen’s by Proxy, although admittedly- most days I end up listening to “Back to the Barre”. It’s a show hosted by two moms from the show Dance Moms, talking about their reality show horror stories.

If I’m in the office, I start my day with a gallon of tea and a chat with my co-workers. The empty homes team tries to all be in the office at the same time at least once a week. This lets us update each other and stay close as a team.

I always start my work by going through my inbox/Teams messages. I keep an eye out for any data requests from local authorities or others in my team.

Sometimes, I hear from an empty homes officer who would like a breakdown of empty homes data in their council area. On other occasions, I receive requests for tables or specific data breakdowns from my teammates to use in a report or presentation.

After handling any requests, I dedicate some time to the projects I’m working on as part of the partnerships’ delivery plan for the Scottish Government.

One of these projects focuses on publishing small area data headline reports on our website for each of Scotland’s 32 local authorities, detailing the distribution of homes/empty homes in that area.

Last week, we sent a mock-up of the webpages to our comms team and have moved close to our final step: publication!

The other project I’ve been working on centres on improving knowledge/data management. I’ve been re-organising our team’s SharePoint and developing a guide to ensure everyone on the team knows what data we store and where it is.

I usually finish my day with a gallon of tea and a farewell to my team.

I do a final check of my inbox before logging out for the day to go unwind and prepare to do it all again the next day!