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Intelligent traffic signs provider, Swarco Traffic Ltd, is saying good riddance to whiteboards and complex Excel spreadsheets...

The company is implementing SC5.1, the latest iteration of Tesseract’s service management software, in a bid to revolutionise its asset and field service management and boost efficiency.

Swarco is responsible for keeping drivers informed and traffic moving, by way of smart parking guidance signs, directional signs, speed warning signs and smart motorway information boards. Swarco’s tailor-made traffic management solutions are used by city centres and motorways nationwide, including major shopping centres like Westfield in London and the Trafford Centre in Manchester.

With more than ten thousand signs across the UK, Swarco relies on a hardworking team of engineers to maintain the signs and remedy faults. At present, Swarco has dedicated staff using whiteboards and an Excel planner to manage its engineers’ schedules and ensure that sign maintenance and repairs are carried out efficiently and on time. However, the process is manual and time-consuming.

 

The other problem is that Swarco does not always have access to GPS coordinates for each sign, which leads to difficulties directing engineers to the exact location of the equipment.

“Tesseract is going to give us automation, immediacy and visibility,” says Berony Abraham, Operations Director for Swarco. “The new system will automatically allocate work according to skill set and location, direct engineers to exactly the right place using GPS, and let our customers log in and report faults. Several of our largest clients have already expressed interest in this.”

Swarco looked at a variety of different solutions before selecting Tesseract. “We went with Tesseract because it’s UK-based, really simple and easy to use, and the staff are so helpful,” says Berony. “It’s also more or less off-the-shelf. In other words, you can use it straight away without having to spend ages customising it.”

 

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Road Traffic Solutions, a traffic management organisation who supported the management of the roads throughout the London Olympics and the Royal Wedding have been able to save thousands of pounds in administration costs having switched to a new paperless means of working.

The company who moved onto the MyMobileWorkers‘ system in October have already seen significant savings not only by reducing the amount of time spent on administration but also by cutting out a whopping 1.2 tonnes of paper. To put that into context as well as being great for the environment it equates to a real world saving of almost £12,000 in the five months since they adopted the workforce management app.

RTS staff carry out around 18,000 jobs a year from minor street works in city centres to motorway closures and diversions. The 50 workers now complete job information on the go, which dramatically reduced the administrative burden that RTS had whilst previously logging this information on paper.

The field staff use the MyMobileWorkers app to record information such as proving which items are with which worker at a specific time, details of where the items are being delivered to, and specifically where on the road they are due to be placed,

This has given RTS instant visibility with photographic evidence, of their workflow as opposed to having to wait until the worker has returned to the office and the job being logged as completed which was the process previously.

As well as  delivering cost savings the switch has also provided RTS with improved location and management of their own hire equipment. The result of this is that staff can now search and view instantly which items are in use on which job, allowing them to see which items are missing and at what stage of the job.

Of course as with any field service technology RTS have been able to importantly translate the benefits to their customers also who now have instant access to job details and photographic proof of job completion.

Ben Dexter, Associate Director from RTS said: “Previously we were having a complete nightmare with masses of paperwork and as a company which is growing rapidly, we were looking for a new way of working to ensure our processes were as efficient and streamlined as they could be.

“With all new technology, there can be a degree of uncertainty amongst the workforce as to how it works but MyMobileWorkers was simple to use and within a month, all of our 50 workers were up and running, and using it on their Android devices.”

Graham Whistance, founder of MyMobileWorkers, said: “As Road Traffic Solutions is one of the fastest growing companies in the traffic management sector, they needed the technology alongside this to help them grow further.

“MyMobileWorkers works particularly well in the fast paced environment of the traffic management sector where managers rely on real time updates and the need for accurate job information to be recorded. With Road Traffic Solutions for example, they need to ensure that any of their equipment such as temporary traffic signals or cones, are accounted for when being picked up after a job is finished.”