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Duke Energy
We are very proud of our Duke Energy partnership. For the first time Duke Energy has contracted with a service provider to provide oversight and contract management for their Vegetation Management Program. Starting this year Environmental Design Landscape will manage 3,216 new sites in addition to maintaining the 873 Duke Retail and Transmission sites and 3,900+ sites for Kudzu management within the Duke Energy North and South Carolina region. Environmental Design Landscape has been charged with the re-conceptualization of the vegetation management schedules through their E-Design™ Sustainable Landscape Model. (For more information on E-Design please visit our E-Design™ Web page.) We locate all of these Duke Energy sites through GPS technology from coordinates Duke Energy has provided for us. By locating these sites last year and the new sites this year, we are implementing our new GPS Advantage system to develop better and more effective routes to service them in the years to come. (See next section for more information on our GPS Advantage system.) |
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GPS Advantage System
We have developed a system utilizing today’s GPS technology. All of our working fleet, in both North and South Carolina locations, has now been equipped with a GPS tracking system from GEOTAB that allows us to track where our trucks have been for the day. With this information we can verify that our trucks have been to their assigned properties and determine the length of time spent at each property. We can verify their time to the work order time sheet they complete in relation to payroll as well. With this information, we can develop specific routes and see whether our crews followed their assigned routes or not. This system also monitors speeding and idling time so we can monitor our driver’s habits closely. We can also set the parameters on the GPS units to beep continuously if a certain speed (i.e., 70 mph) is exceeded and will only stop beeping until the vehicle decreases their speed at least 7 miles under (i.e., 63 mph). A warning beep will also sound as they approach the high speed so that they do not exceed it. With all of the various information that we can obtain from the GPS tracking system, we have seen enormous benefits to our business in regards to efficiency and accuracy. |
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