Simplicity Must Be The Key
Summer is finally here! The mood is good, and business is growing in the UK, northern Europe and USA. So all is well, yes ?
During the heady days of expansion and growth, a number of 'schemes' were implemented that quite frankly now look obviously like money-grabbing exercises.
Harsh I know, but bear with me.
Two main ones in our industry are speed cameras and car parking charges.
'I know', you say, 'here we go again with the pro/cons of these schemes.' Well no actually.
My point is that during the recession, the speed camera sections had financial cuts which meant they did not heavily enforce their districts, and even cut the amount of film put into the static camera housings. This surely smells of tax raising revenue over safety. If it was purely safety, then these operations would have held constant. On-street parking charges have been in the news lately, as town centres are deserted, and the main reason is parking is too expensive. The answer cited by authorities for charging was to encourage people to use public transport. But that was never going to work. Why carry all your bags on a bus and train then walk home? Its not practical. So it was obviously a tax raising revenue. Why? Because authorities are scrapping charges to encourage people back into town in their CARS!
Recession is all about sorting the wheat from the chaff & regeneration as I have mentioned in an earlier blog. These two horrible schemes are now showing their true colours. This makes me think what else needs streamlining. Well in recruitment, authorities pay huge amounts for 'electronic' systems to recruit new staff. They are not needed. Just a phone call to an agency, or an ad on a job site, and agencies will call you. These electronic systems take three people to operate, approximately four mark-ups, and ultimately the engineer gets paid pennies, and the authority pays pounds. Simplify it. Get on the phone and ask for an engineer, and see what happens.
In traffic signals, so much emphasis is put on SCOOT/MOVA operations in cities now, that it works out cheaper in the peak hours to just have an engineer sat in front of a CCTV camera screen manually operating the lights. Why? because he's sat in front of the CCTV camera screen watching the program operate the lights anyway. Why pay for the system? > Simplify! If a junction is still congested, well, then there's no more you can do.
Finally, have employers thought about simplifying their own working practices? We at Find The Engineer all work from home (no really, its not a euphemism), we use Skype to video and conference call. We use the telephone and the wonders of the internet to communicate. Its cheaper, reduces ours and clients overheads and keeps traffic off the roads - hey! A congestion busting scheme.
So now its time for economic growth again, surely its time to look at ourselves and ask what we can do to simplify our working life and processes, as we probably have our personal lives...
...Simple
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