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With a bus fleet of 652, servicing 36.5 million riders a year, DART needed a quick and easy method of communicating between bus operators and supervisors, as well as between different departments, when tracking and managing employee schedules and runs.
When operators arrived for their shift, DART employees used a combination of index cards and spreadsheets to record it.
This was stressful and time consuming for both clerks and operators.
“Before OPS-Web, attendance was tracked by having each operator punch a 3x5 card into a time clock and then writing his name and run number on the card. At each bus division, this involved well over 100 operators coming through in a couple of hours at morning pull-out. You can imagine that this was a less than satisfactory solution,” said Steve Meyer, Transportation OPS Analyst, DART.
Furthermore, communication with bus operators and management had to be done in-person or by phone for bidding requests such as vacation time or for disciplinary reasons, which led to miscommunication.
Finally, while the State of Texas does not follow FTA regulations on setting limits on operator working hours, DART still needed an accurate and timely way to track the runs of operators to ensure they did not exceed a certain threshold.
"OPS-Web made our supervisors’ job of dispatching, tracking, markups and bidding a lot easier."
DART added two OPS-Web modules (Employee Information and Bidding Requests) and OPS-SIT (Sign-In Terminal) to their existing OPS solution, which they had been using since 2000. The modules automated much of the communication involving operational and timekeeping information.
With OPS-SIT, employee communication became more convenient. “We are able to use the message on the Sign-In Terminal receipt to communicate with the operators,” Meyer said.
Bus operators could now use OPS-Web to find out their work schedules, set up bids, or check their schedule from the convenience of their smartphones. Besides personal or work information, DART could now keep track of the working hours of their operators, with notifications for when an operator was working near their limit. “With OPS-Web (Employee Information), it flags and tracks the working hours of drivers, and with this we can receive notifications if a driver is working too long,” said John Lumpkin, Senior Manager Trans Tech Support, DART.
OPS-Web (Bidding Requests) streamlined many of the supervisors’ tasks especially the bidding process. “OPS-Web made our supervisors’ job of dispatching, tracking, markups, and the bidding process a lot easier,” Lumpkin continued. That’s why DART has continued to use Trapeze’s OPS solution for over 10 years.
DART saved a significant amount of time, as clerks no longer needed to be tasked with operator sign-ins and schedule requests. Operators could access schedule information on their own, freeing up their time to do other tasks. “Managing our large and diverse workforce requires a lot of tools. The OPS add-ons that we have bought has proven very useful,” Meyer said.
Finally, before adopting the OPS-Web addons, two to three supervisors were needed to manage vacation requests, as well as markup. OPS-Web allowed that work to be done by only one supervisor, leading to savings in employee salaries. “I would recommend OPSWeb for any agency,” said Lumpkin.