Limerick County Council selects FleetWave

For the residents of Limerick, reliable infrastructure is vital; particularly to residents living in the most distant outposts ofthe county, and it's been the job ofthe Council for over a century to ensure that the roadways that keep Limerick on the move are in the very best condition.

Challenge

At the heart of Limerick County Council's road maintenance division is its fleet, operated from its machine yard, comprised of a hundred owned and hired assets, includrng road graders, rollers, bitumen sprayers, chip spreaders, trucks, vans, pick-ups, patching units, gritters and emergency equipment.

A management system was first introduced to the fleet ten years ago, utilising spreadsheet applications to store large volumes of information from a range of documents, which came in the form of vehicle maintenance records, job schedule information and itinerary, and work site reporting.

Patrick Golding, Limerick County Council's Operations Director explains: "It became clear that our existing system wasn't able to cope with the increasing leve1s of information we needed to record, relating to new rafts of health and safety legislation, training, plant, equipment and building certification. We realised that although the system had done its job, it had become out of sync with our needs."

After researching the market for a suitable provider, Patrick noticed that most systems available were tailored to suit commercial vehicle operators, as they were Windows-based solutions that incorporated stores, invoicing and purchase orders amongst others, rather than the specialist records that the machine yard generated.

Solution

Chevin Fleet Solutions was chosen by Limerick as it could provide it with a web-based solution, that could be accessed anywhere, at any time, by an unlimited number of users, allowing for total flexibility.

Limerick's specialised fleet comprising of a variety of plant and equipment requires a highly flexible solution that could be built and added to as the demands on their service provision change. Ready made solutions that cater to different size fleets, rather than individual specifications, simply wouldn't fit the bill.

A dedicated project manager was assigned by Chevin to oversee the implementation process, right from order stage to fina1 handover to create a solution that ideally suited Limerick's requlrements.

Chevin recognised that the machine yard required a fully automated solution able to integrate data from various interfaces including document, accident, workshop, and asset management both internally and externally - to provide personnel with full visibility enabling them to tap into powerful information that would help streamline operations.

Equipped with this new-found accessibility, managers would be empowered to make key human resource decisions and allocate assets more ellectively, with the help of user-friendly sort and query functions. With the use of digltal dashboards, reminders could be set for training courses, motor tax renewal and regular asset maintenance, in order to speed up procedures, minimise human error and manage the accumulation of records.

During the consultation period, Chevin liaised with staff to create flexible screens including using defined text and calculation lields resulting in a totally unique software solution, backed up by on-going training and support.

"Having a representative that if any problems arise we can address them immediately, and software development and user training can be done on a one-to-one basis," Patrick added.

Other modules included in Limerick's FleetWave® package were maintenance schedule records, fuel recording and analysis, plant inspection information, driver details, motor pool and portable device resources, giving Limerick a one-stop-shop that consolidated all fleet related information, that could be easily cross-referenced.

Pre-populated fields were developed on all interfaces, to ensure that data input would be consistent, particularly for those that use portable devices at the road side. The machine yard now has the opportunity to create comprehensive reports enabling it to identify any irregularities and get to the source of any issues.

Results

"Our workforce is now able to input data to PDAs and laptops off-site, resulting in faster access and highly accurate data. Unlike other solutions that we considered, FleetWave® was completely user-definable, so we could build the systems to meet our exact needs, add fields, alter layouts and add interfaces as necessary."

"It is this flexibility that allows us to record not only the data we need but present it in a way most suited to our needs, and make changes if necessary. We can also adapt the reports we generate, which have shown to be one of the administrative team's greatest resources."

It's coming up to two years since FleetWave® was implemented at Limerick County Council, and since then it has been able to streamline processes to provide a better, more cost-effective road maintenance service, using a future-proof solution that automatically updates in line with new legislation and can be expanded to include limitless interfaces.