Solution
A booking process enables a local resident to register themselves, detail the bulk items that require collection whilst ensuring that each item conforms to certain criteria (e.g. flower pots don’t contain soil, paint points don’t contain paint). Items that don’t conform (e.g. gas bottles, gas tank) are flagged with a notice to contact an alternative council run Hazardous Waste Collection Service. For items classed as ‘heavy’, further clarification is required to determine where they are located (e.g. ground floor, first floor, etc) with those above ground being flagged as requiring a Risk Assessment. Additionally, heavy items have their own pickup dates offering the ability for a collection of several items to be split across available dates.
A calendar function allows for the local resident to choose a suitable date(s) at which point they can progress to place the booking and make a payment (subject to a risk assessment if one is required).
The available dates shown in the calendar are based on those days where the service is carried out by the local authority’s waste contractor. With a limitation on the number of items and collections allowed per day, the system’s intelligence is able to remove overbookings by blocking out booked days and / or informing the local resident that due to the number of items these will need to be split across multiple dates.
Bookings which require an assessment are flagged for the Risk Assessor user group and booked within their calendar on available dates. The Risk Assessor can carry out the job assessment to determine if a collection is possible based on specific criteria and then able to enter a decision with accompanying supporting content into the system. If a booking is cancelled, the system will automatically inform the local resident with recommendations to proceed (such as move heavy items to the ground floor); if the booking passes the inspection, the job is released to the waste contractor’s collection crew for the specific date.
The system has further built-in intelligence to support the waste contractor’s collection crew generating a daily route that consider the location for each pickup and calculates the best route with the last pickup closest to the waste centre. The assigned collection crew can access the system via a mobile device and perform specific functions as part of the collection process. Having initially reviewed the collection route for the day, the crew are able to notify the first / next local resident of their pickup. On arriving at the location, the crew are able to assess the items booked for collection and take a photo which is associated with the booking record. Any issues or successfully making the collection will determine the status of the job as complete or not (if unsuccessful this is flagged for review by the waste contractor and RBKC admin). The next local resident for collection is informed by the system via SMS and the process continues until completion of the day’s bookings.
RBKC Admin have visibility of all activities performed by local residents in the creation of bookings and the waste collection crew performing the daily collections as well as generating a number of performance reports
The system is built in Microsoft .NET running on an SQL Database and hosted within Rocktime’s Secure Hosting Environment for the Public Sector.