April/May 2007

ISS (Integrated Services Solutions), a leading facilities management company, has chosen MapMechanics Mobile, a new integrated task management, scheduling and communication system, to manage a major contract it has won with Northern Rail.

The company says the system has enabled it to handle the weekly task management process 'in a matter of hours', when previously it would have taken a group of planners a full day to achieve.

The application includes hardware and software for 52 mobile teams servicing 494 locations including railway stations and administration offices throughout northern England. This is the first railway-related contract in the UK for ISS.

MapMechanics Mobile schedules, communicates and manages the allocation of jobs for the company's mobile service teams, integrating the output from the various elements of the system. These include the TruckStops routing and scheduling system and the TomTom satellite navigation system. (More on the detail of this system in Products & Systems, page 28).

 

The system passes each day's schedule by GPRS to Qtek PDAs carried by ISS's mobile teams, who mostly work from virtual 'depots' in the areas where they live. These display each job in turn, and the satnav shows directions to the next call. There is also provision for engineers to take 'before and after' photographs of damaged equipment and transmit them back for inclusion in a database of work done.

A key benefit has been the system's ability to integrate planned and ad hoc visits more tightly and logically together, saving wasted or duplicated journeys. According to IT project manager David Bucknall: 'TruckStops can bring forward or push back visits, and slot ad hoc work into a pre-planned schedule, combining several jobs at the same location where necessary and planning journeys more efficiently.'

Other components of the ISS implementation include the GeoConcept geographical information system, the AA 1:200,000 vector road network, and ITIS off-peak road speeds. Call handling is managed by the TouchPaper helpdesk system.