Idea #46 -- Work Order Systems to Guide Efficiencies

Idea #46 – Work Order Systems to Guide Efficiencies

Report Status: Fully Reviewed

Researched by: Matthew Gasbarro

Original Idea as Submitted

Seek out technological changes that can increase efficiency of departments internally and externally, e.g., digitize and track all maintenance needs and requests, track public requests for information/permitting/records requests/inspections/etc. Identify the 25 most common interactions / processes between residents and Town employees, assess for efficiency, and identify opportunities for making these transactions self-service through automated systems. Put more public data online to improve town employee efficiency other than responding to in person requests.

Other ideas included in this report

87 - Communication and work order systems: Continue the use of an electronic work order system for maintenance requests: The current helpdesk system allows individual teachers, themselves, to submit work orders directly from their desktops, rather than having to route requests through Building Principals or Custodians as an additional step.
386 - (Assuming nothing exists already...) Create system to record "rudimentary" allocation of work time in major categories (emergency, repairs, maintenance, and operations, say. This log of parsed hours (or fractional workdays) allows management to monitor balance between emergency vs maintenance for instance (are staff members spending excessive time on emergencies and repairs, vs. the "ISO" or standard allocation to preventative maintenance?
If the Town is spending woefully higher % of time repairing, it cannot achieve proper maintenance. Or, we "waste" assets b/c of inappropriate attention to preventative maintenance.
This system would also create a "dashboard" which is seem by several managers, the Administrator and Finance people, if not a secondary alert where excessive time spent tips that related budgets potentially might become "overdrawn" b/c of those emergencies or unseen problems.
With this data, Town will also build an historical record for year-to-year comparison, as well as to determine longer-term focus investment in improvements. This would apply to seemingly all depts, especially any with significant physical plant or equipment, in addition to the depts. responsible for collecting/reporting/analyzing/monitoring this data.
[NB: This is a "crude" suggestion; uninformed by what exists/is done presently...]

Idea intent

This idea recommends a work order software system deployed across all departments to track requests and tasks originating from both within the Town as well as residents or other external parties. The work order system should have the capability to categorize and data mine the requests so that a summary or analysis could identify common or frequently made requests and reveal other opportunities for Town departmental efficiencies.

Weighted Final Score: 43 (Financial Impact: 1, Operational Impact: 6, Time Scale: 2, Ease of Implementation: 3)

Background Information

Work order systems allow the Town and its departments to initiate and track tasks related to facility management, maintenance needs, desktop support, Town service requests, or any other digital or physical request. Using a software system designed for workflow and request management facilitates the request flow process from automatically assigning the ticket to the responsible Town employee, notifications to followers of the tickets when updates occur, alerts or nudges when tasks are dormant, and other features. Additionally, dashboards can be created to display key metrics and create an analysis on a subset of tasks such as by category, asset, or asset type, etc. This proves invaluable for efficient asset management to maintain the underlying asset or formulate preventive maintenance planning. Additionally, it can be used to track people hours on frequently requested tasks so that the task can be automated or offloaded for future efficiencies. These analyses can be generated into reports for public consumption and serve as supportive evidence when making capital or maintenance requests to Belmont’s Capital Budget Committee and Long Term Capital Planning Committee, or in warrant articles for Town Meeting when advocating for funding requests.

Deployed Belmont Work Order Solutions

Department	Work Order Solution
Accounting	BOSSDesk
DPW	Microsoft Excel
Facilities	Web HelpDesk by SolarWinds
Information Technology	BOSS
School Department	Web HelpDesk by SolarWinds

In 2014 IT completed migration of previous work order system by TrackIT to the current work order system BOSS which was selected by the Information Technology director David Petto after investigating several vendors and finding it the cheapest at $5,000/year for unlimited users. BOSS identifies the public sector as a targeted industry and offers special pricing for government agencies. A stated opportunity in the Town Administration’s Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Recommendation for the Information Technology department was to “Create a work order ticket system for multiple departments utilizing the BOSS system currently in use by the IT department. This would have no additional costs associated as the system has unlimited expansion capabilities.”

One of the obstacles for deploying a unified work order system is the custom setup needed per department. It can be time consuming work to tailor the system to its needs or require additional funding for the vendor to implement the necessary customization. Furthermore, training is needed to educate the work force for proper usage. The only department that implemented BOSS as a work order system was the Accounting department.

The Facilities department explored adopting BOSS but found the customization required of the software to be an impediment and instead adopted Web HelpDesk by SolarWinds which has been in use by the School Department since 2009 after migrating from SchoolDude. Web Help Desk does not offer education discounts so the software can be utilized beyond the School Department. It is licensed per the number of tech/admin users with unlimited end users. The Facilities and School departments collectively own 38 tech/admin licenses at approximately $110 per license annually. It is procured with a single purchase order and the cost allocated to each department on a per tech license basis. Other departments could similarly use Web Help Desk by procuring the necessary additional tech/admin licenses.

The Department of Public Works does not use a work order system. Instead, a Microsoft Excel workbook is used to track requests.

Cost, feature set, customizability, ease of use and training requirements are all factors in selecting not only a work order solution but any other software solution. Instituting a centralized software procurement process can evaluate these criteria not only for the department requesting a new software solution, but also to examine the solution for use across all Town departments so that software deployments are not bifurcated.

Recommendations

The SCIG recommends that the Department of Public Works procure a work order system to track its planned maintenance tasks as well as requests for service. The currently deployed BOSS and Web Held Desk software solutions can be evaluated for adoption by DPW, but also consider compatibility for a 311 citizen-request system, as recommended by the Belmont Website Renewal Committee and Idea #221 - 311 System.
Ensure each department uses a dedicated work order software system to record, track and analyze their internal, cross-departmental, and external requests so that departmental reviews can identify efficiency opportunities.

Next Steps

Select Board ask Town Administrator Office to devise a Town-wide centralized software procurement process whereby existing deployed solutions are examined for reuse, and new solutions are coordinated across all Town departments for possible shared procurement if the software meets a current or expected need. Software procurement requests should factor in setup or customization needs as well as training requirements for users of the system.
Select Board ask Information Technology Advisory Committee (ITAC) to review the work order systems and recommend a path toward convergence of the existing systems.