Crossrail rolls out Podfather
Crossrail, the £14.8bn project under construction in the South East of England, has today revealed the deployment of Podfather Field Service system. The Crossrail route will pass through 37 stations and run 73 miles from Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west, through new twin-bore 13 mile tunnels below central London to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.
When Crossrail opens it will increase London’s rail-based transport network capacity by 10%, supporting regeneration and cutting journey times across the city. Crossrail services are due to commence through central London in 2018.
Podfather is a cloud-based mobile software solution designed for businesses operating in logistics, construction, and various field service sectors. The solution runs on rugged handheld PDAs and allows businesses to manage their operations in real time and removes the problems associated with paper-based processes.
Crossrail integrated Podfather’s PDA system into their in-house developed Vehicle Movement Planning System (VMPS). This allows the central section construction sites to view upcoming vehicle movements for a day on the PDA screen and then confirm the details of each vehicle, driver and load when the vehicle arrives at a site.
By using Podfather system, Crossrail have replaced the manual processing of in excess of 1,000 paper forms per day and now benefits from real-time, highly accurate reporting of data back into the VMPS.
Alastair Broom, Director of Podfather said, “Podfather has been designed to be easily integrated into existing software systems to eliminate paper forms. We are delighted to be involved in the biggest UK rail project since Victorian times and helping ensure the construction sites benefit from the real-time visibility of vehicle movements, material deliveries and compliance reporting.”
