One of the busiest motorway junctions in the country, Junction 10 of the M25 near Wisley in Surrey, sees around 300,000 vehicles travelling through it every day. A 3-year project to improve it will reduce congestion, provide a smoother flow of traffic and improve safety for drivers. The £250 million project, awarded by the Highways Agency to Balfour Beatty, included the demolition of Clearmont Bridge requiring the weekend closure of the M25. This demolition alone produced 3,000 tonnes of waste material, which took 80 trucks more than 24 hours to clear away.
Andrews Tippers has over 40 years’ experience in the tipper haulage industry. Evolving to offer a complete haulage, waste and construction service, Andrews has a fleet of over 100 trucks working on high-profile sites such as the M25 junction improvement works as well as HS2 construction, A12 concrete road scheme with Tom Blackwell, and the A249 improvement with Graham Construction.
Andrews originally introduced Podfather’s waste ticketing solution to replace its previous paper-based system. Having trialled the system on other projects Andrews was keen to deploy it on M25 Junction 10 works to reduce admin, improve efficiency and responsiveness, and provide total visibility.
“Podfather simplifies the management of a complex, fast moving and ever-changing schedule,” commented Tim Page, Transport Manager at Andrews Tipper Hire. “Using Podfather we have complete visibility of where our drivers are, what materials they are carrying, and where they are going. This information is available to our client’s on-site management team which means we, and they, can react as situations change and evolve.”
“The use of Podfather on this project was a contributing factor in our selection of Andrews as haulage partner,” added at Michael Ward, Logistics Coordinator at Balfour Beatty. “Digital ticketing, real-time visibility and enhanced reporting all make for a more efficient and more reactive operation.”
Andrews uses Podfather to intelligently plan and allocate loads to each of the 30 vehicles working on the Junction 10 project. Digital tickets, including collection and tip locations, as well as the type of material to be moved, are sent directly to the driver’s tablet and accessed using the Podfather App. At the start of each shift drivers are guided through a series of vehicle checks to ensure the road-worthiness of the vehicle with responses captured using the app and stored within Podfather for compliance and H&S monitoring.
Moving between 150 and 300 loads a day, Andrews’ drivers also use the Podfather app to record evidence of materials transported or loads ‘dropped’. Date, time and location stamped photographs, together with signatures from the on-site Plant Vehicle Marshall are captured and stored within Podfather and used to produce daily reports and inform billing.
“Not only does Podfather improve our onsite performance it also makes reporting on the project much easier,” continued Page. “I can produce the required daily reports in literally 10 minutes, something that would probably have taken me several hours without Podfather.”
“We also utilise the Podfather data to understand the efficiency of each section of works as we are able to asses how much material is being utilised internally vs material that is imported. As information is held digitally it reduces the amount of time spent transferring data between systems and it is available as needed. Podfather is a really great tool and I believe it plays a big role in our overall logistics function.”
