'Dad' watching, saving county money
| Thursday, Dec 10 2009 09:39 PM
Last Updated Thursday, Dec 10 2009 09:40 PM
Since Dad took charge of Kern County's vehicle fleet, county workers' lunch hours have never been quite the same. Dad (that's the nickname I've assigned to Kern County government's new GPS-powered vehicle monitoring system) has helped local taxpayers achieve savings of almost 122,000 miles on the cumulative public odometer during fiscal 2008-09 -- resulting in a 14 percent drop in fuel consumption over the previous fiscal year. But its benefits go well beyond that.
Since Kern County's Fleet Services department installed GPS tracking devices on 84 vehicles in all 12 divisions of the general services department, as well as another 84 vehicles in four other departments, employees just seem to get where they're going a little faster, dawdle a little less. A county truck that happened to be in Wasco might be dispatched to rectify some issue in nearby Shafter, whereas in the pre-GPS era supervisors might have summoned a worker from a more remote location, not aware that a colleague could get there faster, with less fuel expended.
Employees who might have been inclined to drive halfway across town to their favorite lunch establishment are more likely to eat at the place that's right around the corner from the spot their duties happened to take them that morning.
Choosing the neighborhood taco stand over one that's three or four miles away might not seem like a big deal. But 160 vehicles, over a year's time? It's putting tax money back into the county's pocket.
I don't mean to make it seem like county employees were a bunch of loafers before Fleet Services Manager Larry Werts attached satellite tethers to their vehicles; with rare exceptions they weren't and aren't.
The effect has been subtle, for the most part -- a little reminder that Dad's watching, a soft nudge to jar one's awareness about efficiency, speed and cost savings. "It's like a placebo effect," Werts says.
But a couple of times the GPS leash has rectified an employee problem. Fleet managers can see when a vehicle is not moving, for how long a period, and, of course, identify a location. A few months ago, those factors helped them determine that a county worker had been snoozing in his truck outside a southwest Bakersfield restaurant. The issue was promptly addressed.
"We've caught a couple employees who sort of forgot they were being watched," Werts says. "I won't go into detail, but one employee is no longer with the county. (The issues revealed by GPS were) just the tip of the iceberg, though."
The county purchased the first GPS units back in May 2008 for $42,000 -- a substantial investment, to be sure. The $35-per-month GPS airtime charge adds about $6,900 a month to the outlay. Despite that expense, Werts says, the county is still saving money on fuel expenses. "In fact, it's coming back pretty fast," he says.
Throw in employee time savings -- "something we have not crunched," Werts says -- and the benefit is probably even greater.
Safety is another benefit. A county worker's truck broke down a few months ago in Red Rock Canyon, a remote spot on the east side of this New Jersey-sized county, and he cell-phoned in to say he had no idea where he was or how to describe his location. Headquarters was able to send the stalled truck's GPS coordinates to the tow truck company, and he was promptly retrieved.
In addition to General Services, GPS-enhanced vehicles are operating in the Animal Control division (16 trucks), Environmental Health (40), the Public Defender's office (20), and Human Services (8), which has the units on Toyota hybrids that are up and down the state on a regular basis.
Another high-tech money-saver: an electronic vehicle inspection system, known as Zonar, that's streamlining vehicle maintenance in the county's Waste Management division. Vehicles are equipped with 11 radio frequency-emitting "pucks" -- inch-and-a-half diameter yellow discs. Before he sets out in the morning and upon parking his vehicle at day's end, each driver scans each puck with a hand-held device. When he replaces the device in its cradle, information about each of the 11 monitored areas -- braking, steering, electrical, that sort of thing -- is automatically beamed the back to Zonar, which then generates a maintenance work order, if one is needed.
"Since we put these discs on, our repairs have gone down dramatically," Werts says. "The problems those pucks are reporting are being fixed before they become bigger problems. The CHP loves these things, too. It's almost assured you'll be in compliance with your (Department of Transportation) inspections."
The county has 14 sanitation trucks on the Zonar system. All but the loaders (which never leave the sanitation site where they're stationed) also have GPS monitoring.
Dad is thrilled.
"We didn't put this stuff out there to be a punitive tool," Werts says. "We did it because we wanted to be more efficient. Face it, we are getting hammered on the budget. We have to get out some savings wherever we can."
These are Robert Price's opinions and not necessarily those of The Californian. You can reach him at rprice@bakersfield.com or at 395-7399.
