Cotswolds Community Volunteer Service
Cotswold C.V.S. provide a number of travel services over the large
geographical area of South Cotswolds. Much of the work, approximately
75% is medical needs the transport of out-patients into the major local
hospitals in Cheltenham and Gloucester.
Medical needs work is derived from direct GP surgery
bookings and non emergency referrals from the local ambulance service
based in Gloucester. The remaining 25% of the work is made up of social
and other local requirements like GP to pathology blood sample
transport.
The operation is based at Cirencester South of Gloucester with a
number of satellite facilities in outlying villages.
These remote locations communicate with Cirencester over
the Internet using ADSL or dial-up connections. A VPN is established
between Cirencester and the remote location, the only software required
at the remote location is a browser.
KL2 TranSys software
The TranSys transport management system used at Cotswold C.V.S
consists of two standard modules, Community Transport and
Dial-A-Ride . Both of these applications use a single database that
contains information about clients, locations and the resources used
to transport them. This information is all contained in one location
but accessible to any user around the county, this provides not only
consistent information but data that allows for the better
utilization of the resources. The history of all journeys is
recorded by the system and maintained for analysis and reporting
purposes. The system also comes complete with a graphical
information system that allows maps with client locations to be
displayed.
With an annual mileage
in excess of 340,000 (2006), Bryan Griffiths, the Operations Manager and
Jane Winstanley, the Managing Director have implemented a number of
innovative features in order to handle this workload with minimum risk.
This workload is shared between 72 drivers utilizing their own vehicles
but with liability insurance provided by Royal Sun Alliance. In addition
there is one wheelchair accessible car and 9 minibuses used for section
19 services mostly by the elderly wishing to visit the local supermarket
for food and essential shopping needs.
The software used to
control the recording and allocation of these jobs is
the TranSys Community Transport application along with
the TranSys Dial-A-Ride application (see box left).
Bryan Griffiths commented that the use
of technology has brought a number of significant enhancements over the
original paper based way of doing things. Use of a central database
accessible over the internet from any connected computer both flexible
working and the sharing of client trip information with adjoining
organisations.
One of the aspects of the technology is
that every trip has its compound mileage calculated on the fly, with
drivers for each job being prioritised by order of overall reduced dead
mileage. Additionally the system will also make recommendations if
clients could be carried on any existing jobs.