Authority #5

SE London

6 Areas of Improvement

13 Months 

1. Waste, Recycling grounds, cleansing and vehicle services
A scathing external review saw the head of service removed. SSD were brought in to help turn things around. We were able to achieve immediate lifts in service delivery, improving information and the use of ICT while improving inter-departmental connectivity. The Support Service function were amazed to discover ‘they’ were the cause of many issues, including the selection and introduction of a waste services database totally unfit for even the most basic work. The 'award winning' call centre were shown to be the prime cause of one third of all perceived operational issues. Addressing these challenges head on saw productivity improve, costs reduce, rework reduce and income improve while service delivery greatly improved.

2. Capacity management.
A stressed team had to meet seasonal demand increases. Managerial teamwork & cross-functionality were poor while information flow was dire. Backlog pressures distracted from effective planning to hit targets. Costs were incurred with no management control and formal project management took little notice of operational realities.
The management team were brought together, rudimentary information was created and improved, priorities were discussed and agreed, cross-functional support was achieved, information in the field was accessed, multiple (incorrect) reporting issues in the call centre was halted. Significant causes of insurance claims were eliminated; resources and demands were balanced, with non-linear employment terms introduced. (Grounds winter / summer).

3. Fleet Services
Target: Improve utilisation / reduce costs. A distinct lack of departmental management led to frequent imbalances of vehicles and plant, with spares available for spare vehicles, while spares for working vehicles were unavailable. Parking services were using medium sized vans when Mopeds would have been more suited to the task. Spare vehicles, procurement, fleet replacement and utilisation were all reviewed and improved, saving £400K capital in year, with >£250K per annum saved thereafter. 

4. Waste Services Strategy
Challenge - maximise recycling within a £300K budget. We reviewed ‘every possible way' to collect or treat waste. Working with three cabinet members and three corporate directors, we demonstrated 168 ways. We ranked them via Cost, Customer and Environment, reducing the options to the best 25 > 6 > 3 > 1. Following a very rigorous approach we achieved a design that saved the council over £1m in year, with projected savings of £1.7M per annum, taking them from 38% recycling to 67%. 

5. Garden Waste
An external 'managed service' designed using Prince 2 failed massively soon after launch. SSD were engaged to resolve the problems this caused. On the first day of the Lean & Systems Thinking based review, eight FTE’s were fire fighting service ‘melt down’ issues. Using simple root-cause analysis, the team of three managed to find the causes in the first day, reducing issues to half in two days and half again in another two days. Within a fortnight issues were less than previous BaU. This ‘Quick Win’ was used to introduce several more quick wins in the next few weeks as a pre-cursor to the main intervention (above).

6. Accelerating Transformation
Following the success of the waste services strategy development activity, SSD were retained to create a fully detailed implementation plan. An SSD team of three led a series of 'Quick wins', to eliminate the ‘Christmas Blip’ reducing the normal surge of 1000 extra complaints to virtually ‘business as usual’. The team then integrated with the call center to eliminate harmful ways of working, to introduce new and far better ICT, including improved uses of existing systems, to better engage with the public, to more succinctly design rounds for efficiency there-by enabling added value to recyclable waste, to introduce and expand trade recycling services, reducing inflationary pressures on businesses, while creating new income steams, successfully delivering the £1.7M savings with no loss of employment.