Oct/Nov 2006

Chesterfield Borough Council is said to have made "dramatic" improvements in the productivity and number of appointment visits made by its building service engineers, following the deployment of a mobile access solution from Pervasic, a specialist in mobilising corporate applications.

The improvement translates to a £600,000 saving in the two years since the organisation embarked on the project. The council says its building services division is now on track to meet the mandated Gershon efficiency target of £500,000 savings.

Previously it used a paper-based system to manage field staff, with all the classic delays inherent in that approach. Engineers wasted time driving to the depot, waiting for job sheets and vehicle provisioning, queuing to speak to the supervisor for job allocations, and manually filling out time sheets.

According to Mark Tune, mechanical, electrical and ICT manager for housing services at the council: "We are now able to have the same number of people do more jobs within the same budget." He adds: "By boosting productivity, we've seen a 13 per cent increase per working day per engineer."

 

Pervasic provides complete end-to-end solutions, which include "templates" tailored to each customer's specific business requirements. The solution for Chesterfield provides mobile staff with PDA-style handheld devices linked to the organisation's back-office applications.

Among benefits, operatives can progress and close down a job when completed, view jobs up to a week in advance, and see how much money they've earned in a day. They can now start their day slightly later, but make early evening appointments. Job satisfaction is also said to have improved.