Cardiff Council makes easy transition to Fleetclear Connect

A long-standing working partnership

Matt Long, Depot & Infrastructure Manager, who began working at Cardiff Council 12 years ago has been involved with Fleetclear throughout this time. He says the transition to Fleetclear Connect has been straightforward:

“Fleetclear Connect is very easy to use. Because it is web-based and not a desktop application, it can be accessed by anyone with the right authority, from any device. The council can grant access to the system to different teams within the organisation, allowing them to log in from any location. We use it on laptops, tablets, PC and mobile phones.”

The Council has used the system to manage the large number of day-to-day incidents and complaints that arise as part of any large-scale waste and recycling service provision. The platform quickly allows the team to check if a vehicle was in a particular area at a particular time and retrieve the footage to be used as evidence.

Matt continued:

“Previously, if we needed a piece of footage, we had to go to the depot, pull the hard drive off the vehicle, find a computer at the depot and download the footage. Now we can search the system immediately from wherever we are. If we have a complaint about something that happened during the morning, we can review the footage within minutes to understand what happened and then respond quickly to the complainer.”

A powerful fleet management tool

Going beyond the management of incidents, the team at Cardiff uses the Fleetclear Connect dashboard to monitor a range of operational management data:

“The system has allowed us to do a lot more analysis of our fleet operations. We can look at things like how many vehicles have been active, which have travelled the most distance, fuel consumption, idle time. We can identify immediately where vehicles are and see all vehicle routes. The functionality is constantly improving.”

The council also benefits from having fleet data all in one place and being able to combine data from hardware assets to produce meaningful reports:

“At the moment we have a different system to manage the tachograph data. Moving forward we want to incorporate that into the Fleetclear Connect platform so that we have everything in one place. We also want to look at being able to create individual driver profiles so we can look at driver behaviour by individual.”

Moving to Fleetclear Connect

For the council, the decision to adopt Fleetclear Connect as the management software platform to accompany the renewal of its fleet safety camera system was based on numerous key factors:

“If the camera system doesn’t work properly, if we need to swap something out quickly, that requires a strong relationship with the supplier and a very responsive support service. Fleetclear offer the full package. The high quality of their products and service is what we have come to expect and what we want to maintain. A change of provider would be a big risk.”

Fleetclear supports the council with an on-site service twice a year which provides a thorough health check of all the camera systems, ensuring any issues are resolved before they cause a problem. Matt added:

“We try to use these visits to carry out any work we don’t want to outsource to contractors. For example, we might take the opportunity to add a camera onto a new vehicle. Fleetclear are happy to accommodate those kinds of requests. We always feel that we are getting a 5-star service. When you are dealing with incidents and claims involving large amounts of money, having a system that works effectively and reliably is very important.”

A total fleet safety and management solution

Having used Fleetclear’s technology for over 10 years, the council continues to invest in the technology to help it improve its safety standards and fleet management capability. It is now looking at ways to harness the full potential of the Fleetclear Connect platform:

“Our aim is to use Fleetclear Connect as a total fleet safety and management solution. We want to use it to manage all health and safety aspects of our fleet operations and use the data on the platform to further improve our fleet safety policies and training programmes.”