Missoula, Mont. – Education Logistics, Inc. (EDULOG) announced today that the Clayton County Public Schools (CCPS) of Georgia projects nearly $1 million dollars in annual savings attributed to EDULOG’s eDPS (Electronic Driver Payroll System). eDPS is a mobile application that uses cell phones to report and record bus driver work schedules in real time. eDPS is one of the newest components in EDULOG’s suite of transportation management solutions for the K-12 school market.
The Clayton County Public Schools is the fifth largest school district in Georgia, with more than 52,000 students enrolled at 63 schools. Located just south of Atlanta, CCPS operates a fleet of 505 school buses.
“With the EDULOG payroll system we’ve taken care of two of our district’s goals: reducing payroll costs while keeping busing services the same; and ensuring that all labor records are fair and accurate in order to reduce lawsuits and claims against the district,” says John Lyles, transportation director for the CCPS. “We had previously used paper time cards, and with those, a considerable amount of human error is inevitable. And with 522 drivers and monitors being paid an average of $19 per hour, 15 minutes here and there can quickly add up.”
“EDULOG presented us with a very elegant and inexpensive solution: place cell phones on the buses where the drivers would use the keypad to enter their ID numbers, and the system would take care of the rest,” Lyles notes. “That way there is no need for all the drivers to go to one place and punch into a time clock, there can be no fudging of the time, and there’s no need to collect, store, and transcribe paper cards. That in itself saves time and money, and EDULOG’s electronic system keeps accurate records down to the minute.”
The installation of the equipment onto the district’s fleet of 505 buses occurred in April, 2009. “I was impressed that the initial hardware installation only took five days,” continues Lyles. “It was a very smooth process and the installers were willing to work around the clock to accommodate our operational schedule.” In addition to the buses, five handsets were installed next to doors at various buildings such as the vehicle maintenance area and the main transportation office. The system was tested during the summer school session in June by a limited number of drivers, and then fully deployed for use by all drivers when CCPS started school on August 10.
“Another great benefit of the eDPS solution is that this payroll information is recorded in real time and is immediately available for review and analysis,” explains EDULOG president Mike Darling. “Supervisors know immediately if a driver is late/early/on-time, and if a driver doesn’t show up, dispatchers can be alerted and a substitute assigned to that bus. So not only is EDULOG eDPS a payroll reporting and recording asset, it also has a dispatch benefit which increases safety and service.
The eDPS system could save the district as much as $1 million per year in payroll costs, based on the results observed since the eDPS system was introduced in August, although Lyles adds that, “As a result of a variety of CCPS policies and service standards, the actual savings amount may vary.” This savings results from paying drivers for their actual time behind the wheel compared to self-reported hours as was the previous practice. The CCPS pays all drivers for a minimum of five hours per day, but before the implementation of the eDPS system, it was impossible to gauge what was happening the rest of the day, and the district was paying overtime to many drivers who reported working more than eight hours in a day. The eDPS system at the CCPS includes alerts that notify management when a driver is reaching the overtime threshold, and also integration with field trip management so that driver assignments to extracurricular trips don’t routinely exceed the 40 hours per week limit.
“Part of the funding is expected to reduce possible litigation Lyles. “There have been several concerns with disputes regarding bus driver pay, and it was decided that if we could reduce risk by having verifiable records of clock-in/clock-out, we could substantially reduce the chance for discrepancies that could later lead to financial settlements.”
“In addition, our administrative payroll staff can now use the time that was previously spent reading time cards to instead actually analyze payroll trends and investigate the possibility of payroll abuse,” continues Lyles. “Before we had eDPS, we really had no way to systematically look at any of the information, and so we really couldn’t tell what was going on with any certainty.”
“The Clayton County Public Schools also uses EDULOG’s routing and scheduling and real-time GPS/AVL systems,” adds Darling. “The district therefore gains enormous value from the integration of each of these modules—EduTracker GPS/AVL makes the routing and scheduling system more accurate, eDPS reconciles differences between planned schedules in the routing software and actual work times, and the routing software forms the basis for comparative analysis in the EduTracker system. This synergy benefits dispatch, route planners, drivers, payroll administrators—and of course the students and parents of Clayton County.
About eDPS
The eDPS driver payroll system offers districts an efficient way to automate the process of drivers clocking in and out, saving valuable time that is otherwise wasted each day with manualsystems. The mobile software interface is designed to provide specific functionality for school bus drivers in an intuitive and easy-to-use format. School districts can track a full range of payroll events beyond basic driver login and logout such as tracking break time, pre-and post-trip vehicle inspection times, and any custom payroll events desired. Designed to easily support districts that pay drivers different rates for different activities, the system can differentiate between time periods for drivers performing field trips, regular transportation, special needs transportation, or any other category of interest. The system is expandable to fully integrate withnrouting and scheduling software so that comparisons of actual driver logged time versus scheduled time can occur. When drivers login, the system will verify they are on the right bus.
Dispatchers can also be alerted in real time to drivers that did not perform a proper pre-or post- trip vehicle inspection. Managers can review automated reports which expose payroll abuse, drivers that logged in too early or late, had too much slack time before or after the route, or simply identify operational inefficiencies that can be adjusted to increase productivity. eDPS can be implemented as a stand-alone system, or seamlessly integrated as an extension of EDULOG’s cell phone-based GPS system (EduPhone) for tracking school buses. It can also be expanded to monitor and record more detailed vehicle inspection data with EDULOG’s eVIS solution.
About EDULOG
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 and medium-sized 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.
