Improvement Process results in Savings
Pinellas County Public Works, in early 2004, began the process of improving their maintenance operations in Roads, Traffic, Mosquito Control, Permitted Facilities and Bridges. This was a proactive effort to improve with specific objectives such as:
Provide documentation to justify resources and required work.
Establish Activity Based Costing (ABC).
Establish a complete automated system as a tool to manage maintenance and operations work.
Establish a “business like” approach to planning, performing maintenance and document this effective method to manage County infrastructure.
In summary, the implementation effort has resulted in more work with less labor, equipment and financial resources being needed with the generated efficiency savings totaling from $6 to $12 million. Some of the specific results are as follows:
47 recommendations are now completed and implemented with major employee involvement.
State of the art WEB based system software, which is one of the first in the Country and is operational for all groups having nearly two years of information.
Complete asset based data has been collected for all major Road, Traffic, Bridge, Mosquito Control and Stormwater Infrastructure.
All supervisor and management staff have developed business management skills in the use of the latest automated systems and business practices, such as work order management, biweekly scheduling and productivity evaluation.
323 Performance plans and measures have been developed for 180 activities.
Improvements have occurred with productivity,or the work per unit of time, showing an increase of over 40% from FY 2004-5 to FY 2007-8.
Further, now in 2008, the County has 47 less staff and 70 less pieces of equipment and one less maintenance yard.
The County is doing more work and has new business processes with integrated web based technology in place for this optimization to continue. These tools will permit the County to absorb future asset growth, while at the same time allowing increased service levels.