The Northamptonshire control hub is fundamental to the operation of not just county council functions but delivering the needs and wants of other stakeholders. The concept as trialled in Northamptonshire is to be implemented in other contracts and be expanded upon to increase it’s function and value adding capabilities.
Objectives:
Control hubs have been identified as a method of realising significant opportunities and benefits for MGWSP and May Gurney businesses in both the short term and increasing these benefits in the long term.
The objectives of this method of working can be defined as follows:
- Introduce efficiencies through improved scheduling and resource utilisation.
- Give assurance to all parties and improve client confidence through improved auditing and reporting which are used as early warning indicators to assist in the governance of activities and contracts.
- Reduce CO2 emissions in carrying out each service.
- Increase productivity, measure, monitor and minimize risk in service delivery
- Improve safety.
- Introduce marketing and PR opportunities.
- Improve the management of emergencies, winter services and major events.
- Utilise systems for contract management, works ordering, network & asset management and financial and commercial control to best affect.
Achieved to Date
The deliverables to date in Northamptonshire Highways are in the areas of people, processes, and property & Systems.
People – the hub is staffed by 2 no. Operational Controllers who have been recruited into these positions. The noticing team and programming team are situated within the control hub and tmanaged through a matrix structure.
Processes – the processes introduced have been reviewed within the MGWSP IMS and agreed with the process owners. The revised processes incorporated into the hub are now live and managed through the MGWSP IMS.
Property & Systems – Elements of the MGWSP new Works Management System have beenintroduced early and integrated with WOMS for visibility and control of works. A web based telephone management system was introduced. The property was modified dramatically to facilitate the hub and set a standard for future working environments.
Examples efficiencies already realised through the hub following the go live on 6th September 2010 are:
- Through the monitoring of idling time of vehicles and improved scheduling of works to reduce traveling time for a day’s schedule, fuel costs have reduced by approximately £1200 across the contract in the 3 week period. This has also lead to the corresponding reduction in CO2 emissions.
- Improved work scheduling by area teams has been delivered and supervisors now have full visibility of the progress of the works against scheduled. This has lead to approximately 2no. extra jobs completed on the contract per day. Over the 3 week period there have been an extra 30 jobs completed on the network compared to before the implementation of the hub.
- Near miss reports have increased. There has been an increase of approximately 7 near misers per week reported due to the Control Hub. This is a 50% increase from before the hub was operational.
- Community stewards are spending more time on the network. The community stewards are estimating that they have increased the amount of time actioning public enquiries on the network by approximately 5 %.
- Northamptonshire County Council’s confidence in MGWSP has improved substantially in the first weeks of the hub and has given them surety that MGWSP is developing their way of working and the contract as a whole.
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