The issue of increasing traffic congestion is a major area of concern for Government at both a local and national level. It is also something that BT, with its large mobile engineering workforce, takes very seriously and is working hard to address through the development of innovative technology solutions and improved working practices.

As part of its drive to highlight the progress it is making in this challenging area BT, in partnership with T-systems, recently helped sponsor the annual one day Traffic Management And Parking (TMAP) conference in Manchester.

Focusing on the issues facing local authorities and central government in dealing with the increasing number of vehicles on the road in the UK, the event was attended by around 320 delegates. It proved to be very well timed, given the Government’s announcement the previous week, giving the go ahead to fund a major congestion charging scheme in Manchester itself.

Presenting at the event was Neil Mellor, BT’s Director of Intelligent Transport, who explained the key issues that Government and society have to face up to and how changing attitudes to work and technology solutions can help to make a real contribution to the problems being faced. Critically, he explained how BT is contributing to an overall solution, through the implementation of it’s agile working programme, its response to the London congestion zone and the significant improvement it has made in its own carbon footprint.

Complementing BT’s message, Ian MacGregor of T-systems presented a seminar putting the case for Road pricing as an effective way of tackling congestion, and explaining how technology can be the enabler in making this work effectively.

In his presentation, Neil explained how BT had addressed the substantial challenge presented by the London congestion charge and how the introduction of a workforce management tool, known as Taskforce, has enabled the company to reduce the number of vehicles entering the congestion zone by 300 and put 470 engineers on foot.

Taskforce is a software application that has been especially developed for BT. It is used to co-ordinate engineers, location, parts and tools to ensure that they all are delivered in time and together, to a particular job. It enables BT engineers to locate a property and zoom in to view road, networks, local plant, network details, ducts and cables giving them all the information they need to complete a job in the quickest possible time.