Computers that told tradesman how to do job ditched by Stoke-on-Trent City Council
TRADESMEN working for the city council were barred from making decisions about repairs needed at each property – because they had to follow instructions loaded on to a personal computer.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council has ditched so-called 'personal development assistant' (PDA) computers on the advice of consultant Vanguard.
Under the old system, a call centre worker would decide the type of repairs needed using 'fault diagnosis software' and load the job on to a Kier tradesman's PDA.
The computer would allocate a strict time slot based on the job the computer system decided was needed.
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That meant workers were unable to react to the damage they actually found at a residents' home – as it had to be rebooked as a new task.
Thousands of jobs took several visits before being completed, while tradesmen were forced to rush jobs to reach their next task.
Lee Harrison, a council quality surveyor, said: "You can attempt a repair but you don't know how long it is going to take.
"You could get to a simple job to change the timer switch on a boiler, and it turns out it needs a full replacement.
"But because the system told the tradesman how to do their job, they would be allocated a 30-minute slot.
"They'd say, 'sorry, I can't do this job because that's not what is on my PDA'."
Comments
by Anon_mow_cop
Monday, October 08 2012, 11:18AM
“@focusboy
Quite right and the councillers would have had the final decision on this policy, I was a local counciller some years ago and thats how councils work.”
by warren-lloyd
Monday, October 08 2012, 6:14AM
“Very true Focusboy, I have come across some right idiots in the civic center, non of them council members, not since the BNP got there cards and coppers anyway.”
by focusboy
Sunday, October 07 2012, 2:16PM
“@Anon_mow_cop
You ask who keeps voting this lot in. The fact is that most of these nonsense ideas don't come from elected councillors. They come from salaried council officers who are employees, not elected members.”
by gormhenghast
Saturday, October 06 2012, 11:43PM
“Strange how pre Unitary status that all tradesman worked on a piece work scheme that worked and since then all the trashy ill thought out ways of working have failed, all those zany ideas that the Council has paid and wasted money for by the bucket load. NO ACCOUNTABILITY, and then we have van der laughing stocks buddies telling us for a hell of a price what we all know.”
by Robnoxious
Saturday, October 06 2012, 6:03PM
“Another classic case of not listening to the experts on how things should be done. The people doing the job.”
by Redtone
Saturday, October 06 2012, 5:53PM
“Computer says 'NO'...”
by Anon_mow_cop
Saturday, October 06 2012, 3:00PM
“Another waste of rate-payers money, I would like to know who keeps voting this lot into power ????”