Council streamlines waste workflows

Waste management is crucial for any council to ensure the safety of the community and environment; however, obstacles like overhanging tree branches, dumped rubbish and overfilled bins can make waste collection a very tedious process. Following an influx of close to 12,000 customer service requests last year, primarily for missed bins, Hume City Council in NSW has implemented a Spatial Waste Collection & Incident Recording System to streamline workflows for its waste services crew.

Missed or non-compliant bins previously involved a list being made manually by drivers and provided to the council’s depot customer service staff; however, drivers were not accurately reporting missed bins and staff were dealing daily with aggressive behaviour by residents whose bins had not been collected.

Central to the council’s Spatial Waste Collection & Incident Recording System is a tablet PC located in the middle console of each waste truck. Displaying an interactive map window, the tablet is connected to a real-time GPS, a bin collector arm sensor and an Incident Recording Box.

Using AutoCAD Map 3D and Autodesk MapGuide software, a Waste module was created by merging Hume City Council’s organic waste subscribers list with a map of the area, marking each property from which bins are to be collected. An AutoCAD drawing of the truck route was then overlayed onto the module to display the route for the driver to follow.

A digital sensor on the bin collector arm records the collection of each bin with date and time, for which the system then places a green circle at the location of the collection spot. This process occurs automatically without the need for driver input — the only action required by the driver is selecting a button on the Incident Recording Box to report a non-compliance or amenity issue.

The buttons on the Incident Recording Box are labelled with items such as ‘bin not out’, ‘bin overloaded’ and ‘tree overhanging’, and each time a button is pushed the system places a corresponding icon on the location with date and time. Information collected from the trucks can be listed in different data forms and copied and pasted into other documents, such as statistic displays and individual truck reports.

Hume City Council’s Spatial Waste Collection & Incident Recording System graphically records various incidents to streamline its complaints handling process. The system is easy to use and provides information in a timely and accurate manner, enhancing customer service and saving time for drivers and depot staff.

In addition to streamlining workflows, the system improves the proactive reporting of maintenance and amenity issues such as dumped rubbish, incorrect refuse and contaminated waste — maintaining an environmentally sustainable and safe community.

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