Many parts of Britain have already experienced the kind of weather shown in our picture, but at least one winter maintenance specialist company, Gritit, was expecting to be ready when the time came.

The company is using a comprehensive Web-based planning, monitoring and tracking solution developed by Masternaut Three X. It includes real-time vehicle tracking and telematics; PDA-based mobile field service software; and a real-time business intelligence solution, VisuLive.

Gritit receives Met Office Road Surface Temperature reports ('MORST reports'), which are entered into its system to generate jobs. These are then automatically sent to operatives' PDAs.

As soon as they are ready to leave the local depot, the driver ID key logs who is driving which vehicle and the system maintains a real-time record of travel time, speed, fuel consumption and routes. All of this can be viewed by managers and customer service staff.

 

According to commercial director Jason Petsch: 'We have a network of local depots that operate within regions covering the whole of the United Kingdom. Without this level of automation we would need more people to plan, manage and monitor their workloads.'