James Day speaks to Tranzaura CEO and Founder Mike Price about its Vehicle Compliance Solution, which has now been adapted specifically for the coach and bus industry
Tranzaura’s Vehicle Compliance Solution is proving to be one of its most successful products. It has already been adopted by a number of major operators, including Metroline, London United and Travis Perkins, and is used daily by tens of thousands of drivers.
With great strides being made by the company in the [wlm_nonmember][…]
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Breaking into the London market
Tranzaura initially targeted the London bus market around three years ago with its existing Vehicle Compliance Solution, but the company quickly realised that the commercial vehicle tailored service was not user friendly enough for bus operators. Because of this, it developed a coach and bus specific version of the software, dramatically expanding the number of features in Vehicle Compliance Solution in the process.
“We worked with the engineering team at Metroline to help develop the product which we have today, which is specific to coach and bus,” Mike explained.
“It is a specific product to deliver electronic first use checks to bus and coach operators.
“It has been a partnership approach with Metroline to help develop the product. They have worked with our development team very closely and have challenged us to make the system multi-functional and integrate with the smart devices which are installed on buses in London.”
One of the major deviations from the standard Vehicle Compliance Solution product was the ability to display CCTV through it – something specifically requested by Metroline when the product was pitched to it.
“In every bus in London there’s a CCTV system, which includes a 4” monitor,” Mike explained.
“On a double-decker, the upper deck has to be visible on the screen at all times when the vehicle is in motion, and switches to an exit door when the vehicle is stopped at a bus stop. Metroline wanted this screen to handle Vehicle Compliance Solution as well as the CCTV, instead of adding an additional smart device to the vehicle.
“The first challenge was to take the CCTV feed and display it through the app. We achieved that, and were then asked to display both CCTV feeds simultaneously, and we’ve achieved this through a splitscreen on a 7” monitor.
“If at any time the driver wants a full view, he just touches the image on the screen.”
The development with Metroline then came to the attention of RATP Dev London, another operator in the capital which subsequently adopted the application.
“We then started talking about all of the different challenges that a London operator has,” Mike continued. “One of the notable ones was multiple drivers driving the same vehicle on the same day.
“You can have five or six different drivers driving a bus, with five or six different types of handwriting on a defect card. That defect card doesn’t come back into engineering until the bus is out of service at the end of a day.
“With our system, we now can give the facility for multiple driver logins on the device. If a driver takes over a bus in the middle of service, he logs in, acknowledges he has taken over and we now know he’s taken control of the vehicle, and he does the checks when it’s safe to do so.
“We can now show the operator the number of drivers who have driven a bus each day and when they took over.
“We have listened to the client requirements to deliver this solution to the industry.
“We’re very excited about it. It’s very innovative and nobody has done this before.”
Collaboration
The adjustment of Vehicle Compliance Solution for the London bus market has been something of a collaborative project. While Tranzaura has done all of the development, it has worked with both Synetics and 21st Century, who allowed their CCTV systems to be used through the application.
In addition to that, to deliver the system for Metroline, Tranzaura partnered with Samsung, who then brought EE to the table as the mobile provider.
“The Samsung platform is very unique to Samsung,” Mike added.
“They have their own operating system and we’ve done a lot of work to implement the system on it. As a result, we’re now an approved development partner for Samsung globally.”
Automation
A lot of the features in Vehicle Compliance Solution are automatic, reducing the administrative burden on the operator and its drivers.
“We’ve created notifications which alert the engineering manager if a bus moves when it has had no inspection,” Mike explained. “We eliminate vehicles moving within the system without checks being carried out first.
“We can go as far as geofencing the depot location, and if a bus moves outside that location, we send a notification alert to say it has had no first use check.
“Everything about the system is real-time. The engineers are getting to know the defects straight away, allowing them to be more productive and better manage time.
“We’ve also added accident and incident management as part of the application. The driver can electronically record everything on the device if there is an accident or incident.
“We can direct that information to wherever the client wants it to go.”
Benefits of the system
Mike stated that the system offers much wider benefits than ensured compliance.
He explained: “We’ve collated information from customers regarding return on investment, which averages at a 15% reduction in cost-per-defect.
“Instead of a defect not being noticed, operators can do more effective preventative maintenance.
“We’re also seeing a 98% reduction in paper costs. There are no more defect cards which have to be manually inspected and processed, which saves a fairly arduous task. We can tell when and where a driver carried out his checks and how long it takes.
“With the system in use, we’ve seen a 64% reduction in vehicle downtime, because of proactive real-time management of defects. It prevents lost mileage, which is a major benefit in London with performance-related income.
“The other thing we’re seeing is it makes things much easier from a compliance point-of-view. With our system, everything is cloud based and electronic. The operator can access the data for an individual vehicle at the touch of a button, without having to search through boxes and boxes of first use cards.
“There’s a full audit trail from the creation of the defect to the resolution. It enhances the compliance process for any operators who use the system. It meets all the requirements of TfL, DVSA and the Traffic Commissioners.
“The system allows the engineers to move away from paper and get on with what they need to be doing. Engineers going to do preventative work can access the back-end software, where they can see what pre-existing defects are on vehicle, ensuring they have the right parts and right tools for the job. They’re not going to get to the vehicle and discover stuff they didn’t know was there.”
Of course, the boost to compliance remains one of the system’s major benefits.
“When we first engaged with one of our clients, their compliance was at about 82-83%, with that proportion of drivers doing their checks properly. With Vehicle Compliance Solution being implemented, they’re now up at 98-99% vehicle check compliance.”
The electronic edge
As an electronic app, Vehicle Compliance Solution has a number of key advantages over more traditional paper-based compliance.
The system will alert a driver if a defect has already been reported, preventing duplication of defect reports and unnecessary administration.
There is also a facility for the DVSA to use the application to view recent check reports. They can see the driver, the date, the vehicle registration, which garage it is being operated from and the start and end coordinates of the journey. The examiner can also email the data from the driver’s device to themselves.
The report incident/defect functionality on the app, where the driver is able to record issues which occur during operation, is completely customisable, with different operators able to request different information depending on how they work and what they require.
This information can then be automatically directed to the relevant department and the included back-end software suite used by engineers, so they can be prepared to deal with the issue.
When a defect is reported, an alert can be automatically sent back to the driver if it is serious enough to prevent the vehicle from being used compliantly in service, such as a malfunctioning ramp, or the driver can be allowed to continue if it is something relatively minor like cracked glass on an indicator.
Every vehicle in the operator’s fleet is given its own detailed profile, with specific information such as the number of cameras it has. Specific checks will appear for double-deckers, single deckers or New Routemasters in London, for example.
When a shift begins, the driver logs in with a username, password and vehicle registration. If the device used is vehicle specific, it removes the need to put in the vehicle registration each time. Vehicle Compliance Solution is already connected into iBus in London, so the one device per vehicle may prove to be the natural progression for the service.
Outside London
While the London market has driven the growth of Vehicle Compliance Solution, it is far from being the only market where such a system is useful, and the service can be stripped down if some of the features tailored for the London market are not required by an operator elsewhere.
“First use checks are a national requirement, and some territories have CCTV as a legal requirement, so we’re anticipating growth outside London,” Mike said.
“We already have some private hire coach companies using Vehicle Compliance Solution without the CCTV component.
“They still have instant management and multi-driver handover, but if at any stage they go down the road of retrofitting CCTV onto their vehicles, we can enable it for them.
“Everything about the product is completely customisable by client requirement. We don’t tell them what they should have – they tell us what they want.”
In addition to this, the fact the system is approved by the industry regulators means that investing in it is likely to show that the operator has the right attitude to compliance.
“If a company has gone to the trouble of investing in this system, they’re doing things right and it is going to enhance the compliance process,” Mike said. “The DVSA may be more inclined to place them in the green on the Earned Recognition scheme, and be less likely to stop the vehicle at the roadside.”[/wlm_ismember]
