Case studies by Meantime IT

The Problem

The trouble is that with so many specialist tasks required, assigning them to right person was becoming a logistical mess. To add to the confusion, jobs could come in from a variety of places, from the website or telephone to other council workers. Information regarding the problem had to be funnelled through correctly to the right person in the right place. It didn’t help that some jobs required prioritising over others, such as if a dead animal in the road needed to be cleared away. Colchester needed Meantime to come in and clean up.

Keeping the streets clean isn’t just a matter of grabbing a brush. The street services team at Colchester Borough Council see the big picture and work hard to deal with graffiti, abandoned vehicles, litter, fly tipping, playground safety assessments, emptying bins, and yes - even grabbing a brush!

What we did

Meantime’s MD, Fenner, rolled up his sleeves and set about discussing the challenges and possible solutions with the managers and team leaders. But it was Paul, one of our developers, who really got his hands dirty. He accompanied the service team on the streets to see exactly how they worked.

Then our team set about building the enormous database required to store all the tasks, geographical details and skillsets which would underpin the system.

Getting every element of the legacy systems to talk to one another was the next step. Our task management system had to listen to the council’s website and all their other sources of service reporting. That data had to be categorised and given a priority before it could be matched against the best worker for the job and assigned in time for the start of the rota. Our solution was so comprehensive that it even pushed the allocations down to smartphone level, meaning no worker was left having to chase tasks.

Meantime being Meantime of course didn’t stop there. The tasks could be marked as complete and notes recorded, with accompanying photographs if appropriate, from anywhere so that managers could see how work progressed and keep an eye on that big picture, adjusting their teams and training according to up to date information.

Now, over three years later, the system has robustly scaled to handle tens of thousands of tasks in the neatest system a council street service team could ever ask for!