Home Smart 100 2011 ARGUS — Electronic Work Diary (SMART 100)

ARGUS — Electronic Work Diary (SMART 100)

May 5, 2011

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The following SMART 100 profile and the information it contains is a duplication of content submitted by the applicant during the entry process. As a function of entry, applicants were required to declare that all details are factually correct, do not infringe on another’s intellectual property and are not unlawful, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, obscene, or otherwise objectionable. Some profiles have been edited for reasons of space and clarity. More about the SMART 100.

ARGUS — Electronic Work Diary

This innovation initially came to life when…

…the transport regulators and state road authorities decided that Line Haul Transport Operators must operate their business to a stringent set of complex Fatigue Laws in 2009. These laws fall under a strict Chain of Responsibility (CoR) legislation designed to make heavy vehicle fleets safer. Unfortunately the fatigue laws that have been implemented, although great in theory, are impossible to manage in practice, in manual format as a work diary.

WHAT & HOW

The purpose of this innovation is to…

We at Fleet Effect developed ARGUS to simplify the management of manual work diaries. Providing real-time management for driver fatigue, eliminating the large auditing task associated with paper-based work diaries, while fatigue breaches are identified automatically. Allowing better scheduling of drivers, avoiding financial and criminal liabilities.

It does this by…

…providing an electronic system that monitors the work and rest activities of a driver on shift, automating those legally required variables, like location, time, job status and odometer. It self-audits and provides alerts and breach warnings back to base, so allocators can schedule jobs under the requirements of the fatigue laws.

PURPOSE & BENEFITS

This innovation improves on what came before because…

…the current market uses a paper-based system to record fatigue, whereas ours records in real time, therefore giving an allocator a driver’s 14-day fatigue history, making rostering and scheduling easy and absolute. Otherwise, all manual data must be stored for seven years and audited at base, making the whole process retrospective and very unproductive.

Its various benefits to the customer/end-user include…

…accurate real-time fatigue data, educating drivers and allocators in the fatigue laws, ensuring compliance to those laws, making for a more productive resource allocation. Improved auditing with preventative warnings for drivers eliminating fatigue breaches, providing brand preservation through risk mitigation.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

In the past, this problem was solved by…

…using a paper-based work diary, and trusting that drivers and allocators were doing the right thing, followed by a significant auditing and validation process (if undertaken?) and post-incident review process when breaches occurred. In reality the new fatigue rules have not been implemented successfully and companies are either being less productive or breaking the law!

Its predecessors/competitors include…

…implementation of a GPS tracking system to track trips, recording driving hours as work and non-driving hours as rest, which is breaching fatigue management under the law. Paper-based systems are open to tampering and misuse.

TARGET MARKET

It is made for…

…the heavy vehicle transport sector which is currently projected at over 40,000 units in Australia, where the large operators have the most trouble because of the volume of work required to manage the fatigue task. These operators generally have large proportions of subcontractors who generally push fatigue boundaries, are harder to manage and cannot be easily held accountable under Chain of Responsibility (CoR) laws. A company must show that they have taken ‘reasonable steps’ to fulfill their fatigue obligations when scheduling contractors. Automated fatigue does this. With OH&S harmonisation coming into place in 2012 the market will likely extend significantly.

DISTRIBUTION STRATEGY

It is available for sale through…

…direct marketing to the industry and well-defined market channels, being established suppliers within the transport sector that can provide added value to their own products/services: Registered Training Organisations, Insurers, Technology Providers (ERP, GPS Systems). Improving SEO and Web strategies.

Our marketing strategy is to…

…finalise implementation of a large working version of the system as a case study in 2011. Following this we will continue to increase our industry exposure through: trade shows, speaking opportunities, seminar attendance and networking. We are building our channel and referral strategies through an integration program with existing market leaders and ensuring that our internet strategy provides quality reference material.

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