Our Smart Technology
Our award winning in-house technology ensures we are at the right place at the right time delivering quality maintenance services every time.
Our award-winning smart technology
Nimbus is our award-winning bespoke technology platform that controls, automates and guarantees all aspects of our business and service delivery. Designed in-house, Nimbus is a cornerstone of OUTCO’s ability to deliver year-round external infrastructure services.
To succeed in this space – especially in winter gritting – involves working within a tight delivery window, often six hours or less, to execute thousands of jobs across the UK and Northern Ireland. These must be delivered to individual specifications, in an ever-changing environment, often up against the elements and in the worst of the winter weather. Nimbus uses integrated tracking and telematics software in conjunction with an algorithmic decision-making platform to ensure our teams are at the right place at the right time, delivering the right service.
Nimbus is a game changer that underpins our ability to deliver consistently excellent service. It is a major contributing factor to our success in winning business and service awards. Nimbus automates our service management and delivery and includes:
Intelligent scheduling
Issue of detailed job sheets to our teams
Issuing pre-and-post service client notifications
Verifying service completion and generating reports
This advanced technological capability enables us to efficiently and effectively manage and report on service delivery across assets throughout the country.
Nimbus & Weather Forecasting
Weather forecasting is an integral part of the Nimbus solution. Nimbus provides us with outstanding forecasting accuracy of temperature and site conditions and offers the most detailed-UK weather areas, with thousands of localised temperatures providing full coverage across the UK.
OUTCO weather forecasting leads the way with forecast accuracy thanks to access to multiple weather models such as the Met Office’s high-resolution models, the world beating ECMWF weather model and the American Global Forecast System. OUTCO is the only facilities company to offer a completely dedicated winter forecasting service to the private gritting sector based on road, not air temperatures.
This means all forecast information provided to us is quality controlled by a team of expert meteorologists to ensure the highest level of accuracy possible. Our weather forecasting has consistently surpassed targets set by the Highways Agency, boasting an impressive 97.8% reporting accuracy in comparison to Highways England’s 85%.
Nimbus & Pulse
Working with Nimbus, Pulse gives our clients live service information in the palm of their hands – alongside the ability to communicate directly with our teams. This time-saving tool keeps you fully abreast of service delivery while freeing up time to focus on other duties. Pulse tracks the operator rather than the vehicle, with such concepts as geofencing built-in to enable further route optimization for operator delivery.
Nimbus & Portals
In addition to the pre- and post-service notifications which you will receive, clients also have access to the OUTCO Web Portal, a secure online interface customised to each client and portfolio, providing the ability to view, search and interrogate past as well as scheduled services output from Nimbus. The system updates in real time and is especially valuable in enabling your busy managers to get a snapshot of works across the portfolio at any point in time. Information stored in the system includes the electronic service reports for each visit.
How Nimbus Technology Benefits Clients
By creating an integrated technology stack, OUTCO provides our clients with the benefits that come from having an automated 21st Century solution to take on age-old information management problems.
For clients, the advantages of the Nimbus technology stack include:
- Performance monitoring against SLAs and KPI requirements, via charts on the dashboard.
- Jobs tracked from start to finish, ensuring we service the right sites – managers can see on map the ‘live’ location of our operators are confirmed by our telematics and GPS software. Our geo-fencing technology prevents work commencing until they are within the boundaries of the site.
- Health and safety compliance prior to shift start – operators undertake self-assessment checks – completing fitness for work and vehicle inspections.
- Productivity tracking to ensure visits are completed within timescale – Pulse confirms status of progress per visit – issues including site access are reported on the dashboard for review.
- Regular reporting, tailored to create the reports that your company needs you to provide
- Cost savings through time/labour efficiencies calculated through route optimisation.
- Clients can request additional service visits (callouts).
- Clients are able to view which sites will be serviced that evening.
- Previous site visit data is available to view on demand.
- Ability to view the forecasted weather conditions including the road surface temperatures.
- Clients can contact our Helpdesk directly.
- Job reports are available, following completion of the gritting/snow clearance visit.
- Ability to view the breadcrumb trail of operator movements across each site.
- Geofencing inbuilt, with alerts if operators deviate from set areas
How Nimbus Technology Drives Our Operators
Arming our operators with OUTCO technology ensures the highest possible standard in their work, from start to finish. This starts with pre-commencement health and safety checks, driving to site, completion of activities (e.g., each gritting visit), through to confirmation of the end of an operator’s shift and reporting back to you of work completed. Jobs are dispatched daily and directly to an operator’s smartphone, ensuring that our teams work safely and efficiently.
Job status is tracked through Nimbus, providing visibility of the status and progress of work at any time per operator, to maintain SLA performance. All data collected via Pulse is imported into our Nimbus contract system, following the successful completion of each job, enabling the efficient production and expedition of client performance reports submitted daily.
News
Today’s outdoor estate is rapidly changing with data & technology, learn how winter gritting has been transformed for businesses. With the space of smartphones, consumers demand for convenience & easy access. Discover the impact the “consumerisation of IT” has on winter gritting
A trend towards accessing any service with greater convenience and immediacy on any device has proliferated in recent years. Here, Jason Petsch, CEO of OUTCO, explains how consumer-style technology is changing winter gritting in the UK.
The summer of 2022 will be remembered as being a hot and dry one, in which temperatures in the UK reached a record-breaking 40.3C at the peak of the heatwave. These hot temperatures are becoming more common and often trick us into presuming that the winter will be mild, without any need for winter gritting services. Not true.
We are absolutely thrilled that our market leading service and telematics app, ‘Pulse’ has been shortlisted for ‘App of the Year 2023’ in this year’s UK Business Tech Awards
The end of DST, which occurs on the last Sunday in October, is traditionally seen as the start of the gritting season in the UK. This is because the clocks go back one hour, which means that there is less daylight during the evening and morning commute, which in turn makes the temperature lower, the roads more slippery and increases the risk of accidents
OUTCO is delighted to be shortlisted as the Property Tech Company of the year 2023. Great recognition for our Tech Team and especially for our unique in-house technology NIMBUS to be validated at this level. Great recognition for our Tech Team and especially for our unique in-house technology.