The Customer
Derby City Council (DCC) is rated one of
the best‐performing city councils in England
and Wales, receiving four‐star status
(the highest achievable) from the independent
audit commission. DCC operates
a fleet of over 300 vehicles across all
divisions including Building Services,
Waste Management, Street Cleaning, Environmental
Services and Highways. The
fleet comprises the full local authority
range from small vans to 26‐tonne refuse
collection vehicles.
The Challenge
In 2002, there was a rising trend in the
number of litigation claims made against
UK local authorities for improper road
gritting. DCC wanted to take a proactive
stance and prevent any claims from going
to court by being able to provide evidence
of its road gritting activities.
At a later stage, DCC needed to expand
any solution to the rest of its fleet and
improve its route planning, scheduling,
customer service and response levels
across all divisions.
The Strategy
DCC decided to implement a vehicle tracking
system that would enable it to prove
which roads had been gritted, the speed
and time that they were gritted, the flow
rate at which they were gritted and which
spread pattern was used. DCC’s Highways
Division issued an open tender inviting
applications to supply an appropriate system.
The Decision
DCC evaluated several companies during
the trial process. SimplyTrak was chosen
as the preferred supplier based on
system reliability ‐ which was of paramount
importance given the underlying
objectives. | Follow‐up
In 2004, DCC issued another tender inviting
applications for a tracking system for
the rest of its fleet, beginning with 100
vehicles in its Building Services division.
More than 10 suppliers submitted proposals
and a shortlist was drawn up to give
presentations of their systems. Three
companies were chosen to run trials and
SimplyTrak was chosen as the preferred
supplier based on ‘best value’.
Key Benefits
DCC has identified the following key benefit
areas from the SimplyTrak system
• Prevention of litigation claims. This has
saved management time, reduced resource
requirements and decreased
financial liabilities
• Full visibility of the entire fleet 24/7
• Ability to send appropriate vehicles to
job locations faster and more efficiently
• Ability to easily add, reconfigure and
reschedule vehicle rounds and routes.
Previously this was a complex, time consuming
task
• Improved customer response times
• Increased Service Levels
• Reduced communication costs
DCC commissioned its tracking system to
reduce its legal liabilities. As well as
achieving this it has enjoyed a positive ROI
across all other areas of the system. |
