I reviewed just about every telematics system out there.”
Justin Toole, Fleet Manager at M&Y
One of the largest housing maintenance and construction companies in the Northwest, M&Y, supports over 13,000 homes as a division of the Regenda Group Housing Association. While supplying electricians, decorators, plumbers, brick layers, and ground workers to service those homes, it also has a construction team working on new builds.
When Fleet Manager Justin Toole joined M&Y in 2018, he reviewed how its 190-vehicle fleet was managed, and found several ways to create efficiencies and economise. Evaluating M&Y’s use of telematics made it clear that the business wasn’t getting all it needed from its previous supplier, so Justin went out to market. “I reviewed just about every telematics system out there. I had a good understanding of all the key players and what we were looking for, and I narrowed it down by price and usability,” Justin explains.
Quartix vehicle tracking soon became the obvious choice for M&Y. “We were going to save money with Quartix and were able to confirm its system was exactly the right fit for us. Quartix could show me everything in one place; it worked with the systems we already used,” says Justin. “I was planning to bring in 128 new vans and the OBD plug-in tracker was perfect for us because as the new vans came in, we could easily remove the kit.”
A universal tool that helps all departments
The use of the Quartix system stretches across a wide range of roles at M&Y. Planners regularly log in to co-ordinate the volume of work and check drivers’ locations, using Quartix to aid their daily decisions. Supervisors rely on Quartix to certify that staff are completing their shifts at the correct times, and, if there is ever an issue, the system provides a fast and reliable audit of who attended each job and when. Justin uses the Quartix insights to supply updates to the M&Y Heads of Service and Directors at their monthly board-level operations meetings.
Quartix makes it easy to gather data. The beauty of the scheduled report function is that everything comes straight to me. I would rather spend time studying the data than producing it, so it’s an efficient way of working.
High-level insights to assess driver performance
On the first day of every month, Justin is emailed a selection of Quartix reports that allow him to update his colleagues on the following:
– The five drivers with the highest mileage
– The driver with the best driving score
– The driver with the worst driving score and any history that person has in the bottom of driver league table
Highlighting inefficient vehicle use and excessive mileage is important because it costs the business money. When staff are driving, they A. aren’t working, and B. are using fuel. We want them to spend as little time on the road as possible, but to do so safely.
M&Y awards the driver at the top of the Quartix driver league table each month a cash prize in their wages. “There is real competition amongst staff to get to the top. I love how the system also enables me to address those at the bottom of the table and find ways to help them. Not in a disciplinary way, just by pinpointing where the drivers are going wrong and asking them to think about what’s causing that. In general, we get through to the drivers before there’s any need to take action and it’s a proactive way of managing behaviour.”
How Quartix benchmarks driver performance
Quartix driver scores not only assess levels of speeding, harsh braking and accelerating in driver behaviour, the system also utilises a unique database of driver speeds collected from roads across the UK. While important to enforce, a no-speeding policy alone isn’t always enough to ensure safe driving. A high rate of fatal accidents take place on rural roads, despite drivers rarely exceeding these roads’ legal speed limit. Tight bends on 60mph roads should safely be taken at sub-30mph speeds, which makes ‘contextual speed’ a crucial aspect of defining safe speeds.
Quartix offers a better measurement of safety and driving performance. Using this rich database, the system also presents a ‘relative speed score’ indicating how much a driver deviates from the average speed driven on the same sections of road, and signalling the level of risk that they take. This enables businesses to pinpoint risky driver behaviour, and coach the relevant staff to reduce the likelihood of accidents taking place.
Supporting drivers with proof of activity
M&Y’s gardeners regularly visit thousands of homes in the region and sometimes a customer will claim they haven’t been visited. “Our telematics data can guarantee that we’ve been to a site, or if it shows that we haven’t, we ask the staff member why. The proof is there either way,” explains Justin. Similarly, telematics aids drivers in other ways.
If someone calls up claiming our drivers have been speeding or have cut another driver up on the motorway, I can consult the system and know whether there may have been an issue. I take everything very seriously as a fleet manager – telematics can either prove your drivers weren’t at fault or conversely, highlight where you need to have conversations with them. The integrated dashboard cameras we have are solid gold for us and have more than paid their worth already.
Several teams at M&Y share the use of vehicles, such as the cleaning team, therefore driver ID fobs are being installed in these vans. Justin will see driver behaviour reports for each staff member, regardless of which vehicle they drive, and be able to reference who was in the driving seat at any time.
Insights that enable further savings
The M&Y fleet is not authorised for personal use, although employees park vehicles at their homes overnight. Geofencing alerts allow Justin to govern the personal use of the vehicles and ensure they stay parked after hours. But Justin uses this to create more efficiencies, “The reports can help us spot things such as vans parked at an employee’s home for a long period of time, if they are on long-term absence, we can put their van to use.”
By creating geofences for the local waste disposal sites on the Quartix system and reporting on when the vehicles enter these, Justin has been able to find discrepancies between the waste disposal charges M&Y incurred and the number of visits that were showing. He also matches waste disposal trips with the associated jobs to make sure all charges are accounted for.
There is still another 30-40% more I could be doing with Quartix if I were to spend more time getting to know the reports. Its integrations are helping us automate so much and saving us time, so we are using that time to learn. We get more than what we need out the system already – anything extra is a bonus.
Driving down fleet emissions
Justin has been keeping a close eye on his fleets’ CO2 emissions using the Quartix reports to support the Environmental & Social Governance Strategy, and with 11 electric vehicles on the fleet already, M&Y is procuring more. “We carry a lot of equipment in the vans and some operatives do 250 miles in a day. So, we’re starting small, but I’m hoping that by the time we get around to replacing the bigger vans, the technology and infrastructure will have progressed,” says Justin, who is lucky to have in-house electricians installing the vehicle chargers. “We charge the EVs when the workers are on-site. For us, that’s the most efficient and practical option.”
I feel happy that the M&Y fleet can now run itself. Everything is in check. The changes we’ve been able to make with the help of telematics have transformed the way the fleet operates.
Justin has already recommended Quartix to other businesses that are looking for a telematics supplier. “One of our contacts in the social sector knew the process we’d been through and how I’d reviewed all the options, so he trusted my judgement. They are now happily using Quartix too. I can vouch for the great service level that Quartix demonstrates as well as the capabilities of its telematics system.”
To find out more about how Quartix vehicle tracking can benefit your business, visit quartix.com/en-gb/, email enquiries@quartix.net or call the team on 01686 806 663.
