Parking Meters Get better results from your repair contractors, with performance based work management tools... Street Lights

One click to Google Maps Mapping is a big deal. And it usually comes with a hefty price tag. It's not enough to display just reports -- you need to be able display maps. iSLIMS can help you see your assets using GOOGLE Maps. With a GPS coordinate for each asset (street lights, or parking meters) you can see exactly where each asset is located. Now, as you look your work tickets -- you also have a ONE CLICK access to the most sophisticated mapping systems available on the internet - GOOGLE MAPS. That's right - your work ticket links directly to a GOOGLE MAP pinpointing the exact location of your asset. GOOGLE MAPS can suppliment any GIS system that you may already have in place. Let's face it - GIS systems are slow when displaying graphics. Most GIS systems have a LOT of heavy lifting to do - to get a map display to your screen. And you wait patiently, for your screen to show you where your street light or parking meter is located. It doesn't have to be that way. With GOOGLE MAPS, within seconds you see exactly where your street light or parking meter is located. No confusion, no waiting. With iSLIMS, you get the best of mapping systems -- directly from the internet. Got questions? We want to hear from you... 301.520.4954 email: jane@cyconpub.com Jane Wadsworth / Patrick Todd Software Engineers & Designer of iSLIMS Cycon Publishing, Inc. 1006 Somerset Lane Silver Spring, MD 20904 USA Recommended Articles Work Management Software and Performance Based Contracts Mapping through Google Interface to your GIS Software YOU customize Is your FOX watching the HEN House? Pricing Options --Option 1: Internet Use License --Option 2: Install on YOUR network (EUDK) --Option 3: Reseller (RDK) Free 30 Day Test Drive No IFs, ANDs or BUTs Guarantee Parking Meter Performance Tools Street Light Performance Tools Solving problems, through automation Cycon Publishing - saving you $$ by building software that evolves naturally with your business handHELM(tm) - A little secret that the marine industry doesn't want you to know... StormTRAK(tm) - Transform your snow and ice removal program into a budget conscious machine Copyright Notice Copyright Cycon Publishing, Inc. 1996-2009. All rights reserved. Any duplication, attempt to modify, reproduce, or redistribute the content on this site, is expressly prohibited and punishable by law. Violators will be prosecuted to the maximum extent possible.

Simplify your Performance Based contracts - with work order repair monitoring that connects the dots. Find out how you can quickly score your contractor performance, and assess penalties if necessary. Learn how performance base work management will tie the language of your contract - with the performance of your contractor. And best of all, you can get started right away!

The Evolution: How work order management software became ONE with performance based contracts Street Lights In the mid 1990's, I was asked to help the Street Light division of the District Department of Public Works with automation. At the time, the Street Light Division had no software tools in place to monitor daily repairs made by it's contractors. Multiple contractors maintained the 65,000 streetlights in the District. Depending on the location of the streetlight pole, the repairs may have been made by a contractor working for the Federal government on "federal" property. Alternatively, in other parts of the city, repairs were made by a contractor working directly for the District. The District of Columbia is a different beast from most cities. In some ways, the District operates more at a level similar to federal and state governments. In other ways, the District must rely on it's own resources to do tasks other cities take for granted. So, you can imagine the outcry of public opinion, when crime spiked in different pockets of the city due to streetlights being dark. The finger pointing began. What were the repair records? Who failed to repair the streetlights despite the repeated calls for repairs by the citizens of the District? At the time, I had been a partner and software consultant with the District of Columbia DPW & Transportation for 5 years. It was 1997, and I had just written and installed DPW's first enterprise call center and work order system. The District was broke at the time, and for pennies on the dollar, I had managed to develop a system that tracked everything from graffiti to potholes, missed trash collection to clean city initiatives. DPW had just begun monitoring and tracking it's response to citizen calls for services, with automation that had been designed on a dime and worked like a charm. The management folks at the Street Light division were ahead of their time. They realized that they had 65,000 in street poles and fixtures of citywide assets. They needed to know what poles were affected by group re-lamping projects. They needed to see where wattages were insufficient and needed to be upgraded. They needed to be able to track their assets using GPS positioning. Oh, and yes, they also needed to see how well their contractors were responding to requests for repairs. On top of it all, they realized that their contractors needed incentives to perform to higher standards. At the highest standards, the contractors would be rewarded for their efforts - not only in responding quickly to repairs, but also by proactively maintaining streetlights. Should the contractors fall short on their list of incentives, penalties would be assessed. Meet Performance Based management contracting. Of course, it was one thing to write all of these incentives into a contract, and another to be able to determine if the contractor was meeting, or falling short of it's performance goals. Typical work order systems would not do the job. These applications did not provide enough detail to match the language of the contracts. Typical work order systems translated calls for service, into work order. If they were GIS-based, you could even see the problem areas easily on a map. Good stuff. But, it would be impossible for the Street Light division to manage it's contract using traditional work order or call center software, because the reporting was not tied to performance criteria. Instead, the Street Light division needed to be able to track specific motivational factors as it related to street light repairs - and provide a "report card" to the contractor. They needed to be able to score both the quantity of repairs being made, with the quality of these efforts. They needed to be able to determine if incentives that were documented in the contract as "incentive based" - were truly being met. They needed a birds eye view, with all supporting detail available - to justify each and every action. Bottom line - they needed to make sure that automation judging the of repairs and maintenance of streetlights - was a one-to-one match with the language in the contracts. Good ideas often get put on hold due to politics, and/or changes in leadership. It happens everywhere. All of the time. The Department of Public Works was reorganized, and the Street Light Division was suddenly a part of the Department of Transportation. Existing contracts were re-evaluated, and new ideas were flowing in from a sudden source of federal funding. A new city-wide call center was implemented in 1999, and everyone was told to use this application, irregardless of the fact that it didn't have a way to create work orders from service requests. Three more years went by, and still, there was no automation that could connect the dots between performance based contracts and work order management. Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel. The Streetlight Division of the Department of Transportation desperately needed a solution. They needed automation to help oversee their performance based contracting needs. And, they needed it yesterday. The feds had finally allocated some much needed funding to the District. Instead of re-inventing the wheel, we resurrected our existing work order management software, gave it a complete makeover so that it would be web-based, and carefully wove in the performance goals from the contract. The new performance based work order system represented the goals set forth in the repair contract. A scorecard for each performance goal was automated. Quick turnaround repair results were rewarded. Sluggish repair results were subject to penalties. The accuracy of data entry was monitored. Random inspection results became part of the big picture. Trends were evaluated over time. Patrol crews were monitored for effectiveness. Material usage and costs were captured. Utility bills were evaluated. The city was becoming more energy efficient, and had the documentation to prove it. The contractor was held responsible to the terms of the contract. All of this became a reality - with performance based work order management software - called iSLIMS. Parking Meters Shortly after the the District of Columbia implemented performance based work order management for Street Lights, Parking Meters was getting ready for it's version of performance based contracts. Strangely, their automation needs were both very similar - and yet unique. For many years, the District of Columbia used a contractor called ACS to manage all parking meter repairs. Without having the tools to evaluate the timeliness and quality of it's contractors repairs - the District relied on reports from ACS's own software systems. Of course, you can imagine, that the contractor appeared to be doing an outstanding job! (see "Is your FOX watching the Hen House" ) Without their own set of tools, there was no way for the District to be sure. When the parking meter repair contract came up for renewal, the District of Columbia decided to try iSLIMS to help it manage the performance criteria for parking meter repairs. With parking meters - two performance measures criteria were key to the contract: Measuring Meter Operability and Liquidated Damages for tardy repairs. With over 16,000 parking meters in the District of Columbia - it was imperative to have the vast majority of them working - and collecting revenues. Parking meters out of service, could pose a significant loss of revenue to the city. Thus, the birth of meter operability. Meters were judged daily as either operable, or in-operable. This means, the meter was either working, or it wasnt. And, if the meter wasn't working - then the city wasn't collecting revenue. As an incentive built into the contract, the city cannot have a percentage of NON working meter to be less than 97% for single space meters, and 99% for multi space meters. If the numbers fell below the line of acceptance, then the contractor would be assessed penalties. It didn't matter if the repairs were done on time, or late for meter operability. All that mattered, is the percentage that were NOT working each day. The District needed it's performance based work management software to calculate this for them - automatically. In addition to meter operability - a second set of contract measures were put into place. This second set of measures strictly evaluated the promptness in making parking meter repairs. If repairs were made on time - all is good. If repairs were made LATE - then penalties were assessed. Each month, the contractor is evaluated using iSLIMS. The report with the largest dollar value of penalties is used each month - as a bill to the contractor. If the Meter Operability Report showed higher penalties than the Liquidated Damages for Tardy response Report - then the Meter Operability Report was sent to the contractor for payment. With the aid of iSLIMS, the District of Columbia Parking Meter Division was now able to assess penalties on it's contractor - a feat it had never been able to achieve in the past. With the added incentives to meet higher levels of performance, the contractor now pays far greater attention to repairs.

Is your Fox watching the hen house? When performance based contracts are put in place, you cannot afford to let your contractor run the show. Unless your contractor is very benevolent, or a non-profit organization, their creed is to make a profit. And, you want them to succeed. After all, your city or county selected them to be your repair contractor. You want them to do a good job -- as this makes you look good too! Do you have connections? Your staff is always too small. No matter how many employees work for you, it is just never enough to keep up with the daily volume of repairs. In large metropolitan cities, you can have hundreds, even thousands of calls each day requesting repairs to parking meters, or street lights. The VERY LAST thing you need, is to be doubled over in data entry. You don't have the time to make entries into a work order system based on what your Call Center reported. You need for your information to be streamlined, and efficient. Bada-bing. Bada-boom. You need to use your staff in better ways. You need for your staff to help you monitor and review your contractor performance, and not to be stuck neck deep in a muck of data. If this sounds like you - then you need connections. You need for your performance based work management solution to easily convert CALLS for repairs...into WORK tickets. You need for your contractor to receive these tickets immediately. You want your contractor to complete their field tasks, repair the problems -- and get the close out results back to you. You need to let the person who MADE the initial call - know that the repairs are done. It needs to all happen on the internet superhighway - without manual interference. We have developed iSLIMS so that you can USE and MODIFY these connections - if they make sense for you. Maybe you are a smaller municipality, and data entry doesn't wreak havoc on your day. But if the volume of repairs is high, and you use a call center - then you will want to use "connections". By using "connections" - you are now interfacing to other applications in your city or county. This means, you are sharing data. Sharing data is a good thing. It means that you are not TYPING the same information twice. We think this is a good idea. Very good, in fact. With iSLIMS, you can share data with your Call Center software, your generic work order system or your GIS systems. Whatever systems you have in place - you can share - through "connections". Most repair contractors have some level of automation. They probably want to use their automation, because they are used to it. No problemo. BUT, when it comes to managing a performance based work management contract -- they need to play on your terms, and your rules. Anything less, would put the fox in charge of the hen house. To give your contractors the INFORMATION that they need in order to make repairs - is your job. It is the CONTRACTOR's job to make the repairs, and document those repairs back into YOUR performance based work management system. You WANT to give your contractor credit for a job well done. And, you want to KNOW when repair schedules are slipping away. iSLIMS - puts you in charge of your "hen house". The language of your performance based contract - is embedded into iSLIMS. You don't have to worry about whose "numbers" can be trusted. Finger pointing is eliminated. You and your contractor work from the same "page". And, at the end of the day, your auditors will be happy knowing that repair results are not reported by your contractor (who wants to make a profit) -- but by you. Do it yourself customization I'm going to let you in on a little secret. YOU should be able to customize software to fit 90% of both your current and evolving needs. That's right, YOU. You should be able to customize your software without having to hire a software consultant 90% of the time. How is this possible? Sure, I'm a software engineer and designer, and most likely you are not. So, how is it that YOU are the person who can customize software? Let me explain. First of all, I really enjoy working with my clients, and helping them achieve their goals thru automation. And, as much as I like working with my clients, it is my goal that they stand on their own two feet - without me. I prefer to help them with the heavy lifting -- bigger problems that they truly need me to help them with. Beyond that, I encourage my clients to meet day to day challenges, new reports, new sorting, new ways to look at data -- by themselves. And, I give them the tools to do this. Your performance based work order management software, needs to adjust to your "issue of the day". You need to be able to see reports and results in different ways - yourself - to get what you need. Inexpensively. Quickly. And, I design software to do exactly that. I put you in the "Command Center", without turning you into a software geek. The design of iSLIMS is both simple and yet extraordinarily flexible. Your dashboard (or "Command Center") lets you see both the big picture, or the narrow view. You control exactly what criteria to see on your data entry "view" and your reports. Do you want to compare preventative maintenance logs with citizen complaints? Do you need to see which neighborhood, ward or quadrant of the city is having the most repair issues? Do you need to drill down by a street - or a city block? Do you need to see what materials are used most in the repairs? Do need to see the top 30, or 50 street light poles with the most repairs? Do you need to evaluate results by month, by quarter, by year or by an unusual date range? Do you need to add different criteria in which to measure repair results? And, what about performance based criteria? What if performance criteria changes when the contract renews? Can you adjust the performance criteria yourself to match the verbage of the contract? Absolutely! And with iSLIMS - you can customize any view and report to give you precisely the information you are looking for. But, wait - you're still not convinced. It must be hard or sophisticated to be able to get the custom results you need. You probably need to have a techie person standing by to help walk you through each screen. Let me put your mind at ease. We don't write software like that. We write software that lasts. We write software that you can evolve with. We write software that you can use, and customize, and find easy to operate. If the software was complicated - then you would need to rely on us. We don't want that to happen. We want you to be in the driver's seat. As much as we love working with our clients, we prefer that we only hear from you when you need something that you can't do yourself. Our iSLIMS performance based work management software empowers you to manage your contractors - the way your contracts are written.