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Aberdeen mobilises building services

City Council increases productivity and efficiency with real time mobile and performance management systems.

By Miya Knights, 20 Sep 2007 at 14:16

Aberdeen City Council/a> has signed a £650,000 deal to deploy new mobile and information management systems to improve productivity and efficiency of its building services department.

The five-year deal will allow the Council to overhaul its aging core systems and provide mobile devices to its field staff for real time scheduling and reporting on maintenance jobs for all its public buildings and around 24,000 homes.

Allan Small, Aberdeen City Council service design and development project leader told IT PRO the decision to replace the core systems came as result of the introduction of new, more flexible working practices for its field operatives.

"We've just implemented a new 'cratfworkers' agreement that we hope will give us benefits and efficiencies from a new, more flexible way of working," he said.

In order to achieve more flexible working practices, it was decided the building services' core information system would need to replaced to facilitate more up-to-date scheduling and reporting procedures in support of more mobile technology-based working practices.

The chosen vendor, Consilium Technologies will provide its TotalRepair information system to 100 concurrent users in the back office and its TotalMobile technology will enable 150 of the 300-plus, field-based operatives to receive and complete job information on the move, using Windows Mobile-enabled devices.

The core system roll out is due to begin in November and the mobile technology roll out will start early next year with a phased implementation.

It will provide a quicker and more reliable all-round service based on tenant appointments, creating more efficient working processes so staff can complete additional jobs on a daily basis and reduce their travel time as well as paper usage and data entry.

The implementation will also assist the Council in tracking performance against specific government targets and provide a more effective means of reporting back to the Council's property management function.

Small said: "The real-time nature of the system gives us the flexibility to schedule appointments dynamically enabling us, for example, to advise that an operative is on route and so increase customer satisfaction. The whole system will also deliver better productivity and reporting capabilities as well as help us reduce our carbon footprint by reducing the number of times an operative has to come into the depot, for example."

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