MISSOULA, Mont. – Education Logistics, Inc. (EDULOG) announced today that it will increase its commitment to assisting school district transportation operations through the formation of a permanent group of experienced professionals devoted solely to consulting services. This new group will be led by EDULOG vice president Joe O’Dell, who has spent the last 22 years advising school districts about busing activities.
“EDULOG introduced consulting services in its standard offerings over a decade ago and many of our clients have always seen them as a valuable complement to our software products,” O’Dell said recently. “However, with the recent financial turmoil, we have seen a tremendous increase in the need for these services as more school districts have been asking for full service professional contracts to manage or review all aspects of transportation in order to help them reduce costs. There’s obviously an increased need to improve busing efficiency, and many districts recognize that they seriously need consulting help.”
“The decision to increase EDULOG’s focus and commitment through expanded consulting services is consistent with ourcompany’s tradition of helping school districts obtain the maximum value from new and evolving technologies. For more than 30 years, the results demonstrated by EDULOG’s transportation optimization software have been unrivalled by any other system. Helping school districts increase efficiency and save money is core to EDULOG’s guiding principles and original company charter. The launch of the new consulting group is also consistent with the company’s continuing initiative to increase value to clients through a broadly supported customer centric approach,” added Mike Darling, EDULOG’s president.
“Unlike bus contractors, we’re not interested in driving the buses, nor is EDULOG compensated based on the number of buses in service. Because we have no conflict of interest, we can help districts make rational and cost-effective decisions without bias — something that contractors often have problems with because reducing miles or routes can cut into their profits,” O’Dell explained. “And compared to other consulting groups, not only do we concentrate exclusively on K-12 busing, but we also can go beyond the hypothetical and actually implement solutions through the implementation of EDULOG’s industry leading routing software. EDULOG invented school bus optimization 30 years ago, we know more about it than anyone else, and have helped numerous districts save millions of dollars since then.”
“And now that EDULOG has established the industry’s first GPS-based routing system, we can really pinpoint areas ofwaste and create savings almost immediately,” added O’Dell. “Excessive bus idling, unplanned stops, and route deviations all cost districts money but are difficult to eliminate without the right tools—tools that EDULOG consultants use for the benefit of the district. When combined with our optimization expertise, our services have a return on investment measured in weeks instead of years.”
“Optimizing bus runs and schedules will remain a core part of our consulting operations,” said Darling. “What we’re adding are more staff and resources to conduct audits, serve as temporary or contracted district employees, analyze the costs and benefits of policy changes, and review operational and strategic goals and procedures. We’re offering a full service approach that can be tailored for any size school district. And we can also offer guarantees—the district only pays a percentage of verifiable savings that we create.”
According to EDULOG, the consulting services group can work with any school district: those who operate their own fleet, those who contract busing, and transportation departments that have routing and scheduling software or those that don’t. EDULOG has considerable experience performing operational assessments and evaluations that have provided rational, step-by-step recommendations for fundamental change. “Other consultants may have the
ability to identify a problem or area of concern, but only EDULOG has the experience and knowledge to go beyond this analysis and provide effective recommendations that result in verifiable and permanent improvements, as well as the software tools that allow districts the way to make it happen,” said O’Dell.
Another benefit mentioned by EDULOG is that it has the resources and capability to actually implement the findings of any study or report done for a client school district. “We can, and have: performed large scale optimization projects; created new, more efficient routing plans; provided full-time, on-site staff to assist or even manage transportation operations; implemented a host of easy-to-use and powerful software programs for routing and scheduling, fleet maintenance, driver payroll, field trip management, and GPS/AVL; created automated procedures to streamline reporting to state agencies; assisted with the recruitment of new managers and other transportation department employees; and presented to school boards and other interested parties the advantages and risks associated with large scale changes to transportation plans,” added Darling.
“Because EDULOG is the leading software choice of school district transportation departments, we naturally have a close working relationship with many of the most experienced and influential transportation directors in the country—directors who not only put best practices into action, but also set the definitions for such processes,” said Darling. “We’ve obviously learned a great deal about the challenges and proper functioning of transportation operations from these clients, and several of them will be assisting EDULOG with transportation consulting projects. Combined with EDULOG’s 30 years of serving the K12 transportation industry, and the 100s of years of professional experienced represented by EDULOG’s staff, that’s a level of experience that can’t be matched by any other firm.”
O’Dell added that “EDULOG also has considerable experience with the daunting challenges of adjusting or implementing transportation eligibility policies, walk-to-stop distances, mandated transportation for special needs or homeless students, school bell times, school of choice programs, hazard zones, etc. These all have a fundamental and profound effect on transportation costs, and they are something that require an intimate and comprehensive knowledge of how to first, analyze the problems, and then create valid solutions. We believe that no other consulting group can offer greater knowledge and experience in these areas than EDULOG.”
Joe O’Dell has been a vice president of EDULOG since 2002, and first began working at EDULOG in 1987 as an implementation specialist. During the 1990s, Mr. O’Dell founded and was the first director of the Laidlaw Planning Soluitons Group. Mr. O’Dell has been involved in groundbreaking student transportation projects for the New York City Department of Education, the Hillsborough County Schools of Florida, and the Clark County Schools of Nevada. Mr. O’Dell holds BA and MA degrees from the University of Montana.
Education Logistics, Inc. (EDULOG) has been recognized as the industry leader in pupil transportation solutions since 1978, with an estimated 150,000+ school buses routed by its clients each day. EDULOG partners with K-12 school districts to provide total transportation management systems including true GIS planning and scheduling software, efficiency and optimization studies, guaranteed cost savings plans, GPS-based routing software, student tracking, driver payroll, vehicle inspection, boundary planning, enrollment projection, field trip management, fleet maintenance, innovative ASP solutions for small districts, and a comprehensive selection of Internet-based products. EDULOG uniquely combines its powerful software with initial and continuing consulting services provided by the industry’s largest source of such expertise. For more information about EDULOG, visit www.EDULOG.com.
