Hands on technology for London Borough of Lambeth
July 1st 2005 London Borough of Lambeth Housing Association invests in Expolink’s handheld technology to improve cleaning service levels for local residents Providing consistent high levels of cleanliness for local residents is vital to meet public expectations, constantly improve on these and justify council expenditure. Managing these services over the area of a whole London borough with over 30 000 residents is no easy task.
The introduction of Maximiser, the handheld computerised quality monitoring system, and StaffTrack, for route monitoring, are making this process easier and more efficient every day.
Project manger for the Housing Reframing team, Martin Weston said: “Quality monitoring is generally regarded as the key performance and benchmarking indicator; so the ability to accurately monitor and compare services has taken on extra significance for us with the use of Maximiser.” Lambeth have purchased fifty-three HP 2410 handheld units for monitoring officers out in the field assessing the level of cleaning through a series of bespoke checklists together with a scoring system. The completed inspections are downloaded to a PC at five different regions within the Borough allowing them to produce a variety of reports and trend analysis charts to improve the level of service they deliver. This information is then centrally collated by the council IT department which posts the results for each region on the web site for residents to examine.
The results from this forward thinking technology are also used to provide an overview of service performances at monthly networking meetings across the borough. These meetings provide an ideal opportunity for managers to share information and new ideas on areas of concern and how they have overcome certain issues in their region.
Expolink have also seen a welcome benefit of the Lambeth venture as the final stage of being invited by Hewlett Packard to join their Developer & Solution Partner Programme, Mobility and IPAQ Developers Programmes.
These programmes have been designed to help independent software vendors (ISVs), developers, and system integrators (SIS), create unique solutions across the broad spectrum of HP’s platforms and operating systems. The goal of the program is to match highquality services with their partners’ development cycle, marketing, and sales needs.
Martin adds: “We are using another Expolink product called StaffTrack, to help us manage the repeat frequency of cleaning in some areas to ensure the best possible levels of services for the residents at all times. We have been able to highlight where an increase in the number of cleaning staff is required through their working patterns. We can also manage staff time more effectively, and for the first time we can actually prove that staff have been to clean different areas – which is a huge improvement on what we could previously offer.” One hundred and fifty RFID (radio frequency identification) handheld units have been issued for cleaning staff to use together with 2000 strategically located tags to track the whereabouts of cleaning staff throughout the day. RFID is replacing traditional bar code tags that are open to abuse, can be removed from the wall and duplicated. The StaffTrack RFID tags can be used in many different environments read through wallpaper, plaster and are also waterproof, making them suitable for outdoor use. At the end of each shift the collated route data is once again downloaded to a PC at each region.
Detailed activity reports are produced to show the exact route taken by each cleaner, how long they were in the area and how long they took to get from one area to the next. All information recorded by the StaffTrack system from the five boroughs is once again collated by the IT department and posted on the council web site.
Martin concludes: “We have been able to optimise the use of the same technology, offering us extra product value, to carry out checks on boilers and fire doors in accordance with the standard Housing Association Health and Safety obligations.
“The Housing Association from the London Borough of Lambeth have been so pleased with the service and products purchased from us that they have recommended Expolink to other departments within the council.” The Monitoring and Service Development team has recently purchased OnSite Data – Expolink’s data collection system. They are using the handheld software to conduct electronic surveys to monitor the overall performance of council employee’s services to members of the public.
Other departments within the council have also shown a keen interest in the Expolink suite of software to monitor new aspects of council services. The increasing demand to produce statistical data for public viewing on council web sites appears to be a growing trend. More articles from Expolink: | 
