Since 1995 AIM (Amenities and Infrastructure Maintenance) Services has maintained thousands of open spaces across Auckland for governmental and private customers.
AIM Services doesn’t restrict itself to trimming leafy public gardens, and its vehicles, from trucks to lawn mowers, are put to a staggeringly diverse array of uses. The company does everything from clearing the headstones in some of Auckland’s heritage cemeteries to cleaning up after rock concerts to repairing rugby goalposts.
With that much going on, AIM Services can’t afford to have its players – human or mechanical – watching from the sidelines or tangled up in traffic.
The company has EROAD products installed in approximately 300 of its assets. AIM Services’ fleet coordinator, David Walker, says that geo-location was the impetus for the installation, but the company makes excellent use of other functions. EROAD’s Service module means AIM Services can schedule fleet maintenance based on how long it’s been since the last service, the distance a vehicle has travelled, or even how long an engine has been run.
Geofences help David keep track of vehicles in the depot and let him know how long they’re spending on site, while the Fuel Exceptions reports tell him if a vehicle is using an unusual amount of gas and needs investigation.
Most importantly, Driver ID and Leaderboard help monitor driver behaviour, contributing to on-the-job safety for AIM Services’ 300 employees.
“We have a no-tolerance approach to speeding, but without this system you’ve got no way to learn about driver behaviour other than getting a ticket in the mail.”
David Walker
Fleet Coordinator, AIM Services
The EROAD system helps David ensure that vehicles move efficiently around the city, using the best routes. Not everything that’s being tracked takes to the road, though.
“We use EROAD on our lawnmowers,” says David. “You want to be mowing as much as you can to make it worthwhile, and I can actually see where a mower is and the patterns it’s mowing.”
David also gets reports about how people are driving, which, when used in conjunction with Driver ID, lets him associate a driver with a particular vehicle.
“We have a no-tolerance approach to speeding, but without this system you’ve got no way to learn about driver behaviour other than getting a ticket in the mail. With this system we have real-time information on who was driving the vehicle and exactly how they drove it before, during and after the infringement.”
Leaderboard helps the company further support safer driving, by ranking drivers based on key driving traits such as speeding, harsh braking, and sharp acceleration and cornering. David shares that report every month as a proactive way for AIM Services to encourage positive on-road habits.
David says it’s reached the point now where driver behaviour more or less manages itself, and he’s proud that since he started pulling out Leaderboard reports three months ago, his drivers have received no speeding infringement notices at all.
It’s not simply about avoiding tickets. The information EROAD’s technology provides gives David and his team opportunities to hold discussions about on-the-job safety.
“Every month, because I get the reports, we can talk to people who might need extra support, which makes it safer for them and everybody else. And it’s good to see some people at the top of the Leaderboard every month, showing that they’re driving carefully. So it’s positive for us in terms of safety, and, because our vehicles are branded, for our image on the road as well.”
