Window and door replacement specialist Martindales has cut 200,000 miles and £100,000 by developing an automated diary system for its surveyors.

MADS (Martindales Automated Diary System), which took more than a year to develop, links its surveyors’ diaries with satellite navigation and mapping. As a result, each of its surveyors have had their mileage reduced by as much as 40 miles a day.

The system works by linking a number of organisational and mapping software programmes.

The surveyors cover the whole of the UK and work from home, so they log in each day using a hand-held computer.

The system notes their home postcode as a starting point and then routes the day’s jobs, which have been allocated when arranging appointments with customers according to recommendations made by the mapping programme.

‘It supports a small team of people, who previously only had maps to go at, but sometimes maps don’t tell the whole story – for instance making a 15-mile journey across a city takes far longer than making a 30-mile journey along motorways or country roads,’ said the firm’s founder and managing director, Phil Martindale. ‘It has already made a fantastic difference. Crucially it also enables us to control costs.’

Source

Construction Manager