~Caerphilly County Borough Council~ expects to save £120,000 a year, and halve the time it takes to respond to repair requests, thanks to a new, satellite-based system for tracking carriageway faults.
Caerphilly’s highway maintenance vehicles have been fitted with global-positioning systems tracking unit and tablet PCs which record all workflow patterns, down to a five-metre point. Staff based at the council’s offices will be able to select and allocate work, according to location and priority.
The Exor Corporation-APD Communications mobile solution will even automatically flag up defects exceeding the county’s new target repair time – nine days, compared with today’s 18 – to maintenance crews and allow resources to be redirected to achieve it. Previously, there was a 10-day timelag between the office-based management team being notified of faults and field workers being informed about them.
Mark Rees Williams, chief engineer at Caerphilly, said: ‘With this mobile application, I do not think it is unreasonable to see our average repair time down to a single-figure digit.’ APD Communications also highlighted the potential for slashing the paperwork field workers would have to complete. The council typically receives some 1,500 standard safety notifications.
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