Tracking Efficiency

By MICHAEL MITSEFF, Lake City Reporter
mmitseff@lakecityreporter.com
Published: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 6:16 AM EST

County nears completion of installing GPS units in its fleet. In 2006, Columbia County decided to study the effectiveness of tracking the location of its vehicles, believing it could help with employee management among other uses. Their inquisitiveness is about to become reality.

The method for tracking the vehicles is to install an Automatic Vehicle Locator in each vehicle. The AVL system includes a cellular modem, a power supply, ignition sensor and a GPS antenna.

Eight companies bid on the job in 2006. The county narrowed the field to the top four and asked each for a formal presentation, that included the appearance of the system, mounting specifications, an overview of the software and its monitoring and reporting capabilities — and to discuss pricing structure.

Lake City’s Kennedy Communications eventually was awarded the county contract.

“The modem receives the GPS data from the antenna and retransmits that data through the cellular network back to the county’s computer servers,” said Jonny Handy, Kennedy Communications operations manager and installer.

Handy said he’s worked on the project since its inception.

“There are multiple vendors that came together on this project,” he said. “The hardware and software were provided by a company from Tampa called Actsoft.

“The modems themselves transmit over the Sprint/Nextel network; it’s basically a combined solution and we’re the ones that brought it all together for the county,” he said.

The installation of the units is nearing completion, with only about six public works vehicles yet to be scheduled for installation of the AVL units.

Only departments managed by the Columbia County Board of County Commissioners received the units, excluding departments that have their own constitutional officers, such as the sheriff’s office and the school system.

“Basically every piece of equipment that the county owns will have this equipment installed,” County Manager Dale Williams said, noting that it was done by the direction of the board of county commissioners.

Williams said the county is now tracking all of the county’s equipment, such as road graders, dump trucks and firetrucks. Eventually, EMS vehicles will also be tracked. The tracking system will allow department heads to check on how the equipment is being used and to come up with more efficient work schedules.

“I wouldn’t say that we’ve seen any savings yet,” Williams said, simply because we haven’t gotten to the full program.”

Williams did say that as a result of installing the AVL system, the county receives a credit on its property insurance.

The cost of each AVL system is based on the quantity purchased at any one time, said Handy. The county bought the first 26 units for $622 per unit, originally bid at $645 per unit for 40 units or less.

“We got a better price on them and passed the savings to the county,” Handy said. “The next 113 were purchased at one time for $595 per unit, originally bid at $627.”

The cost includes a one-year maintenance contract on the hardware from the time of installation and a monthly cost of $23 per unit that pays for access to the Sprint/Nextel network, air time and tracking software access and updates.

In addition to work crews, the plan is to expand the AVL system to the county ambulances at the beginning of 2009, EMS Director Rusty Noah said, noting that the date is tentative.

“We’re planning to implement the AVL system in the four operational EMS units and two back ups, plus Noah’s vehicle,” Handy said.

“We’ve been discussing the 911 integration, but we’re waiting to see which way the county goes with the 911 center,” he said. “We’re ready on our end.”

Handy said that integrating the AVL system into the 911 dispatch will drastically improve efficiency — and the safety of the public.

“The AVL system is something we’ve been working toward over the last year and a half and finally came into affect in the last three or four months,” Chief Tres Atkinson, CC Fire Department said.

Atkinson said the department’s next goal is to get the system integrated into the 911 dispatch center to help expedite calls. Once that is accomplished, whenever a call comes into the 911 dispatch center that requires an emergency vehicle, whether fire or ambulance, the dispatcher will know immediately which vehicle is closest to the scene.

“We can also use the system for complaints to verify where trucks are and how fast they are going,” Atkinson said. “We also use it as a training tool for apparatus movement and to keep up with the mileage throughout the county, so that we can track how many miles we travel in a day — it helps us with fuel consumption.”

Atkinson said he can set a maximum speed for his firetrucks and if they exceed that speed, the trucks information displayed by the tracking software turns green. He can also configure the system to send him an e-mail when the speed limit is breached, among many other settings and configurations.

The AVL system is versatile and it’s able to help with just about any logistics problem — moving men and machines in an efficient manner.

“The Public Works supervisor is watching it to see if he can do something different with the routing of the graders,” County Purchasing Director Ben Scott said. “The system shows an exact map of where that grader has been and the route he took that day.

“The supervisor can use the data to determine the most efficient route for that grader to take in the future.”

The system also has the capability to plug into a vehicle’s computer to send its speed, odometer readings and complete diagnostics. Though that technology has not been implemented, it is planned.

See the original Lake City Reporter article by clicking here.