Garland Water Utilities Introduces FleetGreen
 
The City of Garland, Texas (population 225,000) Water Utilities has introduced an environmentally proactive initiative named FleetGreen that serves as the department’s public awareness focal point to educate customers and citizens of the department’s efforts in doing its part toward supporting a cleaner environment while cutting operating costs, improving fuel conservation and reducing vehicle emissions through utilizing today’s fleet management solutions to manage its vehicle fleet.  The utility operates a fleet of vehicle in excess of $3,000,000.00 in the delivery of repairs, replacements, video documentation and maintenance work activities in overseeing a water delivery and sewer recovery infrastructure system measuring over 2000 miles of combined  potable water and sewer main lines. 
 
What is FleetGreen?
 
FleetGreen is the name of an initiative conceived by Garland Water Utilities in 2005 to promote public awareness and to demonstrate our commitment toward a cleaner environment through the reducing greenhouse emissions, reducing fuel mileage and cutting operating expenses by utilizing today’s work and fleet management solutions.  Since 2005, the utility has supported utilization of vehicle management and monitoring solutions on its vehicle fleet.  The utility chose to become a leader and to demonstrate to others just what was possible by installing an automated vehicle location system (AVL) in its fleet toward the end of 2005.  The system is used to provide the utility with real time information on the location of its fleet as well as alerts when vehicles leave prescribed geographic boundaries and exceed city posted speed limits.
 
Why Fleet Green?
 
The utility wanted to create an awareness system whereby it could communicate the successes it continues to achieve through the use of inexpensive fleet management solutions like its vehicle tracking system in the reduction in fuel and overall miles driven annually by its crews. The utility chose to tighten its existing fleet expenditures by using the vehicle tracking and management tool prior to considering costly vehicle replacement programs that support environmentally friendly and fuel efficient hybrids but generally do not support the commercial fleet application.  The following primary goals have been established for FleetGreen namely:     
 
Save Money by conserving fuel
Extend crew productivity without hiring additional staff
Reduce harmful greenhouse emissions
Proactive fleet management and stay ahead of the regulatory curve
Reduce air toxic pollution and associated health impacts
Garland Water Utility leads by example
 
How AVL Works
 
A citizen telephones the Water Control Center with a request for service.  A System’s Operator enters information about the call into its work management system database (WMS).  At predetermined time periods a screen refresh occurs on an AVL layer in the city’s GIS Interactive map and the address of the call is added to the map as a layer.  Service calls with a crew assignment are entered into the WMS and are colorized by Water Utilities divisions and displayed in the GIS Interactive map. A service call with an unassigned crew is colorized with a different color scheme in WMS and remains the color until the call is assigned to a field crew.  The GIS map layer also contains all active vehicle locations symbolized by a truck icon.  The operator benefits by not only having a database record of the call but also has access to a visual rendering of all active vehicle locations in proximity to the service call.  An operator chooses which vehicle should be assigned the call by using predetermined departmental procedures along with an AVL feature known as “Nearest Vehicle to the Address”.  This feature provides information in a tabular format of vehicles that are the closest to the call as well as the furthest away. The operator chooses the appropriate vehicle for call assignment and colorization associated with the call point on the map changes to denote the call has been assigned to a field crew.
 
Other AVL features include “map tip” functionality so that, as the mouse is stationed over a call point or vehicle icon, a popup box is initiated to provide the operator with information about the service call or the vehicle.  Call information is linked directly to the WMS so the operator does not have to end one program and begin another.  The WMS is dynamically activated from a pop up window providing the operator with full update and recall functionality without leaving the AVL system. 
 
Because each vehicle is equipped with a GPS device a state plane coordinate plot is made at predetermined intervals and stored in the utility’s work management database.  At each refresh interval the coordinate data is pushed to the GIS ArcSDE database and plotted on the Interactive map.  Additional important features of the AVL system are a “Speeding Alert”, an “Out of Bounds Alert” and a “breadcrumb” feature that can be activated at any time to retrace the path of the vehicle by calendar date and time of day as it has traveled throughout the city.
 
The AVL system was implemented to address management concerns regarding work scheduling, workload balancing, employee safety, fuel conservation, driver awareness and better utilization of its workforce.  Until the system was implemented Water System Operators had limited knowledge of the location of field vehicles.  
 
Results
 
When comparing Fiscal Year 2006 to 2005 a fuel saving was reported in 62.5% of the department’s eight (8) divisions saving 3,836 gallons or over $10,000.00.
When comparing Fiscal Year 2007 to 2006 a fuel savings was reported in 75% of the department’s eight (8) divisions.  The divisions combined to save over 7,500 gallons of fuel or over $31,000.00. 
 
Considering this savings in relationship with the department’s field services delivery program of repairing, replacing water infrastructure along with cleaning, videoing and repairing sewer line and related infrastructure the utility reports an impressive dynamic of completing more work in 2007 than in the previous year while using less fuel saving the equivalent of 1.5 gallons of fuel for each completed service order.
 
Significant reduction in system generated daily speeding alerts saving fuel and wear and tear on vehicles and enhancing driver awareness while reducing greenhouse emissions.
 
The utility recently completed a seven (7) year return on investment (ROI) analysis of the AVL system for city management review and determined that the benefit was almost 3 times its cost projected to 2011. The soft or non-financial benefits was not measured in the analysis but is believed to be equally impressive due to faster and more efficient service delivery to customers and the resulting positive impact on the environment through reduced emissions.
 
For more information contact
David Jacobs
Project Manager
Water Utilities Department
Email: djacobs@ci.garland.tx.us