Getting it Right First Time in Edinburgh

Transcription

1 Getting it Right First Time in Edinburgh Introduction In early 2008 the Road Services management team at the City of Edinburgh Council started working with Vanguard (Scotland) to introduce Systems Thinking (Lean Management). This approach, branded Right First Time (RFT) in Edinburgh, has resulted in great success, culminating in November 2009 when the defects repair and correspondence projects were announced as winners of the prestigious Guardian Public Services award and in September 2010 when the RFT gully project won the coveted APSE award for Best Efficiency. In the Beginning Back in 2007 Road Services was part of a major Council re-structuring and became part of a new Department. At that time, staff in Road Services were receiving very high volumes of mail, complaints and escalations to senior managers. A small group of frontline staff were pulled together with the Head of Service to look at this problem and it became clear that there were serious issues with the correspondence process. Vanguard had an excellent reputation and were approached to work with a team of frontline staff to sort out correspondence. The team would later learn that the high volume of correspondence was partly a symptom of underlying problems in the system. Vanguard were tasked with transferring their skills and knowledge to the Council s staff, so that future projects could be undertaken without dependency on consultants. The team who worked with Vanguard were all frontline staff who knew the service well. This was the first lesson learned, the experts in any system are those who actually do the job and these people must be included in any changes to the work. Applying Systems Thinking The key to understanding what customers want is to analyse in detail what they say. Vanguard call this studying demand and this is where all RFT projects begin. Initial demand analysis identified 4 main areas of concern for customers; defect repairs, gully cleaning, street lighting repairs and requests for road work/occupation permits. Since those early days, there are now RFT projects ongoing in each of these areas, plus the original correspondence project. When applying systems thinking it is essential that everything is viewed from a customer perspective and the system must be considered from end-to-end. This involves a careful reassessment of what the purpose of the system really is: it is easy to lose sight of this, especially when people have been doing the same thing for a long time. It is then necessary to identify the value steps and the waste in the system. At every step the following question must be asked - Does this add any value to the customer? If the answer is no, then why is it being done? This leads to redesigning the system, eliminating all waste and establishing a customer focussed service.

2 Key to a successful system is measuring the right things the things that have been established through demand analysis as being important to the customer. Once there is clarity of purpose, the important performance measures become clear. It was surprising at first when the RFT team looked at the old Performance Indicator s and targets and often found that the things being measured were not the things that were important to the customer. The use of arbitrary or top-down targets also produced surprising findings. The behaviour that is driven by the use of targets can be unexpected and damaging. For example, a target to reply to a letter within 10 days resulted in lots of poor quality responses being issued to hit the target (these often resulted in a complaint or escalation from the customer) while a detailed, high quality response which might take 12 days to complete was considered a failure (despite the customer being satisfied). It was clear that using targets as the only performance information did not help anyone really understand the system or identify where things were going wrong. Managing using correctly selected measures, related to purpose provides a better understanding of how the system is working. All measures for each project are scrutinised at weekly meetings, problems identified at these meetings are taken forward or escalated and remain highlighted until the team are satisfied that they are resolved. This process links directly to the Council s strategy for Continuous Improvement: until your system is perfect there is still work to do. Redesigning the system is one thing: implementing the changes is quite another! An essential part of the planning is identifying potential barriers, then considering how they will be overcome. One of the biggest challenges for any organisation looking to implement Systems Thinking is understanding the culture change and challenges that it will present. It is essential to have a project sponsor who is senior enough in the organisation, with the necessary authority to help the team break down the barriers. The sponsor must be active and visible and deal directly with the project team. The change in thinking is very difficult for many managers to accept in the beginning. Explaining that managing by targets drives the wrong behaviour and that bonus schemes are detrimental can be hard to hear for managers who have spent their whole professional life using these methods. However with a strong focussed team and a positive sponsor these obstacles can be overcome. The gains that come from successful implementation of Systems Thinking will win over even the most ardent objectors over time. Current Projects some highlights One of the key objectives in the beginning was the transfer of the skills and knowledge from the consultants to the Council staff. This has been a complete success. For the past 2 years, RFT projects have been undertaken by the internal RFT team alone. What follows below is a brief summary of all the RFT projects and current performance.

3 i. Road Defects Previously the only measure for this work was a KPI focussed on make-safe repairs within a 3 working day deadline. By analysing customer demand it was clear that while these repairs were done quickly, customers were critical of the quality and longevity of the repair and wanted a permanent fix. This project has changed the whole process for dealing with defect repairs, putting customers at the centre and improving efficiency in inspection, repair and recording. ii. Correspondence Permanent repairs carried out on the first visit in all but emergency situations Councillors and community bodies routinely informed of planned repairs and the results of each repair exercise New audit system introduced and 96% of repairs pass audit first time Average time to complete permanent repairs reduced from 144 days to 38 days (from report to satisfactory completion) Cost per defect 23% less than for other parts of the City Multiple logging systems, a hierarchal signing protocol and poor processes were creating problems for staff tasked with responding to mail. Introducing a modern database, empowering front line staff, introducing a quality system and useful measures, along with engaging positively with customers has resulted in vast improvements in this area. Average response time reduced from 39.8 days to 5.6 days 29% mail answered the same day it is received Mail answered within 10 working days increased from 45% to 89% Volumes of incoming mail reduced by 50% over a 14 month period Customer demands routinely captured and analysed to inform continuous improvement work iii. Gullies Gully cleaning was functionalised, with different sections providing parts of the overall service. Operations were provided and managed separately by 2 depots and gullies were routinely visited on multiple occasions before being cleaned. The men cleaning the gullies were paid a bonus dependent upon the number of gullies that

4 they were able to clean in a given time period, this encouraged the cleaning of easy gullies (those which could be comfortably cleaned in the time available) while missing the more difficult gullies which would require more cleaning time and would therefore adversely affect take-home pay. Information available to advise customers was limited. The whole system has now been overhauled with frontline staff playing a key role in the changes. Average time taken to respond to reports from the public reduced from 53 to 11 days The introduction of a single gully team, managed by one supervisor A gully cleaning schedule has now been drawn up and distributed in order to provide more comprehensive information to our customers Regular daily feedback is now provided to the Contact Centre The bonus system was suspended. They receive the full wage for cleaning gullies properly and are no longer incentivised to miss gullies on their routes In-cab IT system has been introduced reducing administration time by 80%, saving 700 staff hours and 20,000 sheets of paper per annum Street Lighting This is a more recent project, with many changes still requiring to be implemented. However initial results are positive. Previously the performance indicator s masked underlying problems. There was duplication in the system, the same streets were being repaired numerous times, the service was very reactive and little analysis of recurring faults was carried out. Information available to customers was limited which caused frustration and escalation. A pro-active night time find and fix team was created, the routes were altered and the performance measures were changed. Between Oct 2009 Oct 2010 calls to report faults have reduced by 28% The number of faults being found by the night time squad reduced by 38% between the first and third route cycles The day shift staff now have time to visit the sites where problems are recurring and investigate in more detail

5 Roadworks Support Most recently, the RFT team was asked to work with the Roadworks Support Team which is responsible for coordinating road works in the City. A complete redesign of this team is currently underway. Initially this team was working in isolation, mainly inputting information onto the Scottish Roadworks Register (SRWR) on behalf of local Roads teams, without having any responsibility for ensuring the information was accurate or compliant. Staff morale was very low, potential income streams from inspections were not being followed up, many jobs were not being registered or were being wrongly registered and the IT systems in place were hindering the work of the team, resulting in much duplication. While this is still very much a live work in progress, some of the initial changes have already transformed the team performance. The failure rate for works notified on the SRWR has reduced from 340% (June 2010) to 5% (Nov 2010) The number of jobs notified on the register has gone from 360 (Apr-Oct 09) to 941 (Apr-Oct10) an increase of 261% A new electronic system for arranging site meetings has been introduced Local Roads teams are now inputting information directly onto the SRWR Management overheads have been substantially reduced without compulsory redundancies IT system has been changed to eliminate duplication A suite of new measures have been introduced to allow better performance management RFT Going Forward Using systems thinking in Road Services has been very positive and many more projects are planned for the future. The transfer of skills and knowledge is ongoing, with the staff involved in each project learning the methodology and practical application when they work alongside the RFT team. Looking forward to the next few years when funding for public services is being reduced, organisations need to consider ways to continue to improve service for customers, while reducing the cost of delivering those improved service. Care will be needed not to see lean management techniques primarily as a cost-cutting measure. The RFT approach has demonstrated that by focussing on improving customer service delivery, costs are driven out of the system. Systems Thinking is the answer.