WorldCLASS:: Grounds Maintenance Planning & Scheduling Package - for Councils & Housing Associations



"Planning & Scheduling"

A Hertfordshire Borough Council chose WorldCLASS::APS - with their proven track record of successful planning and scheduling projects - to build a purpose built planner and scheduler for their grounds maintenance.
The scope of the system is:
52 weeks of planning for the teams of permanent and contract staff covering all areas of grounds maintenance, grass cutting, cemetary work, arbor specialists etc.
1-2 weeks short term scheduling of the same teams to optimise the teams' performance to meet the mix of routine tasks eg grass cutting and ad hoc tasks eg "act of god" tree damage.
Performance monitoring of the teams achievements against the scheduled tasks was a key requirement included in the packaged solution.
The scheduler takes into account team calendars and the availablity of suitable plant and equipment.
The task demands are matched to the available team capability over both the longer term planning horizon and the short term scheduling horizon.


The Problem In Perspective

Traditionally, the capacity planning of Council grounds maintenance has been performed manually or by using a spreadsheet. With the growing complexity of the tasks, rates to achieve these, specialist plant and equipment available to be used and the public's need to see the jobs completed asap, such methods have proved inadequate. The problem is that the planning of one team's work interacts with others and ad hoc tasks that are life threatening have to take priority over routine tasks (although these still need to be completed on time!)
The WorldCLASS::Scheduler takes the task priorities into account to produce a comprehensive and complete scheduled task list which utilises team capacity (and plant and equipment) as effectively as possible and then measures the performance against that schedule as the tasks are reported as complete or late.

Scope of problem:

  • Teams of one or more employees
  • Different working hours, skills etc for different employees
  • Tasks assigned to teams
  • Either regularly performed tasks “routine” or ad-hoc “reactive” tasks
  • Planning and scheduling of tasks
  • Performance monitoring

    • Figure 1. Planning Gantt: the vertical axis is weeks (week 1 being week of 1st of April), horizontal axis is cumulative percentage of team capacity consumed by tasks. Overloaded team capacity can be seen easily. Here a split Gantt is shown with 'cem1' team on the left and 'park1' team on the right.




    Infinite Planning

    Capacity planning is done in two stages: the Infinite Plan and the Finite Plan. At the infinite plan stage, the routine tasks, which may be in the Bill of Quantities, as well as the ad-hoc tasks are assigned to their respective teams in the relevant weeks. Also the necessary equipment and skills are assigned to each task and the capacity of each team is calculated. At this stage the planner assumes infinite capacity for both the teams and skills and equipment, so it is possible some teams will be found to not have enough capacity to do all the assigned tasks.

    Figure 2: Infinite Planning bar chart for team 'cem1' after the infinite plan stage. The vertical axis is overall percentage of team capacity. Week 1 is 32% above capacity whereas weeks 3-5 are only at around 20-25% of capacity.




    Finite Planning

    In the Finite Plan stage, the overloads are smoothed out to ensure all teams have enough capacity to do all the work assigned to them. This can be done by running a Finite Plan which will attempt to smooth any overloads. This can be achieved by the following means: moving employees from underloaded teams to overloaded ones, assigning additional employees to overloaded teams if possible, adjusting the start date of various tasks and assigning overtime to employees. Any of the above options can be restricted or prohibited by finite planner rules, which are user-configurable.

    Figure 3: Finite Planning bar chart for team 'cem1' after the finite plan has been run. All weeks are almost at capacity.




    "Manual Finite Planning"

    In addition to automatic finite planning a user interface is offered to manually manipulate the plan. The interface allows the user to:
  • Move tasks between weeks
  • Assign tasks to a different team
  • Move employees between teams
  • Assign overtime to employees

    • Manual amendments to the plan can be done instead of, or in addition to the automatic finite plan. It is also possible, to manipulate the schedule in this way.

    Figure 4: Manual finite planning interface. The controls for adding and removing employee are in the top toolbar, select list for employees shown. Individual tasks can also be moved by dragging and dropping them.






    "Scheduling of teams"

    Optimally scheduled tasks are displayed on a Gantt Chart with the employees shown down the y-axis, the task ID shown on the chart as task label and the time shown on the x-axis (at the top of the screen). It is possible to change the label to other task attributes e.g. priority or location. The scheduling of the tasks takes into account the skills required to perform the tasks as well as the availability of the necessary plant and equipment. Drilling down on the task ID (i.e. clicking on an individual task on the Gantt) gives the necessary detail behind that task.

    Figure 5: Scheduling gantt chart. Task descriptions are selected as task labels, all employees shown (it is possible to filter out only the employees for a particular team)




    "Base Data"

    Clicking on "Base Data" (top of screen) produces a drop down menu of all the data behind the system.
    Obviously this is very comprehensive, that which is required to do the job.
    Employee availability is just one such sub-section of base data.
    By clicking on this, and selecting Agency 23 staff, his/her start and end shift times are shown, as in the screen shot below
    So their shift pattern is a 7.30AM start, finishing at 12PM for lunch, restarting at 1PM until 4.30PM, shown 12/7/06-19/07/06 in the screen shot.
    This data is used by both the Planning and Scheduling system.
    If that person was unavailable for part or all of a shift that would be shown here and taken into account by the Planning and Scheduling system.

    Figure 6: Base Data - Employee availability data here showing the shifts that the employee 'Agency 23' works, from afternoon of 11/10/2006 onwards. The shift times can be changed in case of e.g. absence or illness, this will be taken into account by the planner and the scheduler.







    "Integration and Benefits"

    The WorldCLASS:: Grounds Maintenance Planner and Scheduler can be used on its own or integrated with existing council software systems which can provide the data on ad hoc tasks to be performed. Input of completed tasks from the WorldCLASS Field Team Scheduling system (mobile handsets in the field) can be displayed on the Schedule Gantt chart for performance monitoring purposes - a direct comparison of scheduled versus actual task completion is then provided.
    In this way by integrating the WorldCLASS::APS Scheduler with other modules from the WorldCLASS suite; in particular the WorldCLASS::Planner, significant performance improvements in the day to day completion of a complex mix of ad hoc and routine tasks can be achieved:
  • Improved due date adherence - an accurate customer Promise date (higher on time achievement of tasks) - combined with -
  • Improved visibility of planned and scheduled tasks
  • Optimised makespan using APS
  • Shorter task lead times
  • Increased performance of teams and utilisation of plant and equipment.



    • Please contact the WorldCLASS Sales Office for further information or an on-site demonstration, on:
    +44 1386 871904

    or e-mail us
    Stephen Foster