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Case Study: Upgrade of the Duty Allocation System for Arriva North West

Background

Arriva North West operate bus services in the North West of England and Wales, with operations focussed around Manchester, Liverpool and North Wales. They have been using the Trapeze Duty Allocation System (DAS) for approximately 9 years to manage almost 3300 drivers on their fleet of 1300 buses, enjoying the cost and staff management benefits of being able to match the most appropriate drivers to routes and vehicles.

Trapeze has developed a new graphical version of DAS to replace the character-based application in use across 80% of the UK bus fleet, and this is currently being rolled out to all DAS customers.

Challenges

The upgrade of the DAS application involves conversion and rationalisation of all existing payroll terms and conditions. This needs to be carefully managed to ensure business continuity for the customer, as having downtime of a system involving staff pay is obviously not a viable option. 21 operational depots were to be migrated, 3 news depots added and 2 sets of payroll terms and conditions converted.

The size of the Arriva North West operation, both in terms of numbers of users and geographic spread meant that it was the largest upgrade of the DAS system attempted at the time, and called for a clear and careful strategy to ensure a seamless transition. To be successful the project required total buy-in from the Arriva North West and Trapeze management teams to ensure that adequate resource was allocated at critical times. The planning had to be both detailed and meticulous and was possible due to the experience offered by the Trapeze and Arriva project teams.

A big bang approach to the changeover was judged to involve unacceptable risk, given the reliance placed by the business on the Trapeze application to correctly pay its operational staff.

Solution

The solution was to use a phased deployment over a number of months, splitting the operation – and the project – into manageable sections, based on numbers of users and geographic location. This gradual rollout could then be carefully controlled, and lessons learned from the early phases applied to later ones. One example is the conversion of production databases, where specific data issues were identified and resolved during the first conversion attempts, meaning that later conversions became quicker and smoother.

Customer commitment to the project plan was crucial, and Arriva took on responsibility for detailed system testing and the two week parallel running of old and new systems ahead of each phased go-live. Regular project meetings and review of the project plan ensured that timescales and responsibilities were understood by the project team and all parties agreed that effective communication was a key contributor to the successful conversion of this mission critical system.

A rolling programme of formal, classroom based training, delivered by Trapeze ensured a high and consistent standard of training was delivered to all 150 end users. Two Super Users were allocated to each depot to provide support during periods of parallel running and go-live. These individuals were given focussed training to reinforce local procedures.

Results

The implementation was delivered between February and August 2008, on time and within budget, resulting in a satisfied customer.

‘Having three phases made the process of transition manageable,’ said Pat Milner, Arriva North West’s Project Manager.

‘A good mix of expertise and experience on the project team, and the full support of the Arriva directors led to a successful implementation, and a lot of hard work from both Arriva and Trapeze ensured that the project was completed in the required timescales’.

The project was formally signed off in July 2009 and has now moved into a planned support phase. There is little doubt that the phasing of the project allowed easier management and any problems could be identified, tracked and resolved before they impacted other parts of the operation.

Indeed, this strategy has since been adopted by Trapeze as a template and is now being used to manage several other DAS implementations of similar size and complexity.