News

Podfather Earthworks waste ticketing at Heathrow T2B

06 Jun 2011
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McGee have deployed the specialist Podfather Earthworks system to replace traditional paper Conveyance Notes. The initial deployment has been to capture the vehicle and material movements of the civil engineering element of the new Terminal 2 Building at Heathrow Airport. Podfather Earthworks provides a real-time ticketing system by utilising rugged mobile handhelds and printers. Data accuracy is improved and entry time is reduced by using barcode technology to track vehicles, sites, and material types within the system.

When a vehicle collects a load from the site, all data is captured on the handheld and a uniquely barcoded conveyance note is produced instantly from the mobile printer and given to the driver. The tickets have been customised to suit McGee’s requirements, with all information displayed to ensure all Duty of Care requirements are met for the transfer of material and waste management.

The driver presents the ticket at the intended tip site, where its barcode is scanned to confirm the movement has been completed, and the ticket data is verified to ensure the material details were accurately entered upon collection.

The tickets are received in real-time in a central ticket database, where they are permanently archived and accessible online by both office and site staff. A reporting system is included which allows McGee to analyse the data according to the site, material types, haulier and vehicle utilisation.

John McGee, Director of McGee Group, comments, “The results of the Podfather Earthworks system are compelling. Heathrow T2B is one of the largest earthworks contracts in the history of McGee, so we need to know whatever system we deployed would work. From the first demo of the solution we knew it would suit our needs with little customisation, and within 4 weeks we were running live.”

In comparison to the paper-based processes replaced with the Podfather system, the benefits are huge. Time savings are in the region of 60% less time taken to produce a waste ticket and a reduction of 25% of site manpower with similar savings in the office for data entry. This combined with a huge improvement in ticket accuracy means the real-time reports generated out of the system within minutes of the work being completed on-site would have otherwise taken days to produce.

John continues, “We’re very happy with the Podfather solution and would recommend it to anyone looking to automate their waste ticketing processes.”