Project management and the drive to find new technology for your fleet

Delivering any project without experience can produce a severe impact on the ‘iron triangle’ (aka the ‘project triangle’) – time, cost and quality. The three main deliverables for any project being telematics, electric vehicle implementation or other. But what can make a massive impact to your chances of success is having the right person with the right level of experience. A vehicle technology project is like no other – you are implementing hardware, software and training across multiple vehicle types, multiple depots, and locations with multiple disciplines. Take your driving team for example – do they want the new tech?

Are you unionised? How will you sell the benefit? How will you train the hardware to them and roll it out? How will you make sure the hardware is working first time and the software is set up to work and enhance your operation rather than against it? How will your operations team work with the product?

The chance of failure is high, even if you clearly define your ROI strategy. And if you get it wrong from the start, it snowballs. Project management is not just the start, it’s selecting the right partner – the partner with knowledge of the market and various solutions available.

At Project Telematics, we have access to multiple technology providers in the fleet management sector. We can help you source the right solution in electric vehicle transitioning, ePod, route optimisation, camera and AI solutions, yard management, vehicle and asset tracking, tachograph integration, vehicle safety checks and temperature control. We met a tech company this week who are pulling vehicle weights and dashboard warnings direct from their tracking unit into front end software, allowing you to proactively manage safety problems. We are constantly aligning new partners who are breaking ground with new technology. It can be heavily time consuming to reach out to all the available technology providers in the market. Our consulting is always free, and we aim to find you at least four options for your fleet technology requirements. We also stay with you for the duration of the project – project managing the solution on your behalf. There’s nothing to lose by selecting Project Telematics to help you deliver your fleet technology.

FURTHER INFORMATION

01709 925923

Enquiries@ProjectTelematics.co.uk

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 and electricity network operators with the data they need to effectively plan for any future interventions, as well as investment required to grow and improve the UK’s charging network. The DfT also plans to incorporate EV charging availability into Mobility as a Service (MaaS), as well as standardised carbon data.

In March 2022, the Geospatial Commission launched a discovery research project to explore how location data can be better utilised to support planning and delivery of chargepoints by local authorities. The Commission will be publishing its findings, highlighting the opportunities for location data to boost delivery of chargepoint rollout. Good, timely data made available to the right people can help map demand for a given area, identify the most cost-effective locations and select which of these will best meet the needs of the community.

Five key ambitions

The Transport Data Strategy focuses on five key ambitions to improve the use of transport data. The first is to support data users to better share, find and access transport data, so that transport users benefit from it.

The second is to develop and promote the use of data standards in transport. The use of data standards should enable interoperability across modes of transport and with other systems such as energy and smart cities. The aim is to work to identify key data sets where data quality is a barrier to use – and explore solutions with data owners.

The strategy also aims to lead and promote a data driven culture across the transport sector by improving data literacy and providing targeted support to raise the skills base, as well as creating clear visions for the data programmes and services. The strategy says that it will keep users and industry informed of progress, and will help provide leadership and support to help the transport sector ensure data is subject to appropriate governance, is protected, used for its lawful and ethical purposes, and at the same time its value is maximised.

Head of transport innovation at Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) Chris Lane commented on the strategy: “TfWM welcomes the Transport Data Strategies goal of greater quality and use of transport data. We want to see Journeys for Everyone becoming so convenient, seamless, and trusted, that users will often give up driving their personal vehicles, not because they have to, but because the alternative is better for them and the environment.

“A critical factor in achieving this is the customer receiving appropriate, accurate and timely information and having trust in the provider as they make their travel decisions.”

Find Transport Data pilot

As part of the strategy, the government is launching the ‘Find Transport Data’ pilot, a data catalogue to make it easier for innovators, researchers and others to find transport data, and ultimately deliver efficiencies and help improve services for customers.

This project will build the authoritative source for finding transport data. By bringing a range of private and third sector partners on board to create a data catalogue which will grow over time, this in turn will potentially generate a marketplace for transport data and help clarify the value of different data sets which may help with prioritisation of investment to improve quality and access of crucial datasets. Find Transport Data will provide a marketplace for transport data, so users can find the providers/publishers of data in one place, therefore, making innovation easier.

Tools to get started

Along with the strategy, the government will publish a number of data sets and tools to help kickstart better data use in the sector. This includes Local Authority Transport Data Guidance, which is a web-based tool to help councils use and share their transport data. The guidance provides advice and case studies on opening up and sharing transport data, explaining why and how this should be done so that data can be used by others.

NaPTAN (National Public Transport Access Node) Discovery explores how the existing NaPTAN data set could be improved, such as the inclusion of accessibility data. NaPTAN is a dataset that details all the bus stops and rail stations in the country.

The government will also publish work from an HMT Economic Data Innovation Fund project with the urban observatories in Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle on cataloguing, opening and visualising the transportrelated data from their sensor networks. What’s more, the DfT will publish a process evaluation report, detailing the evaluation of some of DfT’s data projects and assistance provided to other public bodies in designing and implementing their data projects. L

FURTHER INFORMATION

Read the Transport Data Strategy here

Written by Kate Armitage