| United
Utilities Clean Water Audits: MDUK- Audits
As
with the majority of audit and Inspection systems, the previous United
Utilities Clean Water audit process did not provide
the flexibility and accuracy needed in their rapidly
changing and demanding environment. Increasing H&S
concerns, commitment to workforce and customer care
meant that reliable audit and Inspection data collected on work-gangs
in the field was paramount.
To
support their multi million pound service contracts,
United Utilities focussed on sourcing a flexible mobile
system for use by auditors in the Clean Water sector,
which would produce reliable H&S data, and accountability
trails for outstanding actions MobileDataUK were contracted
with providing a complete mobile audit system to capture
data from a diverse range of audits. These Audits are
conducted by United Utilities on employees, lone workers and contractors
working on the roads and in the countryside of the North
West.
This
application was very successfully implemented by MobileDataUK
in 2007. Using a suite of question sets available on
browser or PDA, timely, reliable audit information is
now captured accurately and consistently. The administrator
can change the question sets at any time, which are
pushed down to the PDA’s seamlessly providing
the flexibility and control needed by United Utilities.
The
audit or Inspection findings are fed back to the server and the system
generates email and SMS alerts to managers for non-compliances
found out in the field, and provides a workflow for
ensuring the actions are completed. Reports can be generated
ad hoc or scheduled at pre-determined times and sent
to in-box’s. The reports show audit progress,
outstanding actions and, crucially, non-compliances.
This provides a complete audit solution rather than
a simple data capture process.
John
Prout, Clean Water Manager, United Utilities said ‘
What has changed is the flexibility and ownership we
now have of the whole audit process. Question
sets are standardised and changed by ourselves if need
be and we have the confidence that all of our auditors
out in the field are utilising the most up to date question
set. We can see instantly the non-compliances, how long
they are being taken to action and importantly those
that are still outstanding. The sophisticated reporting
system provided as part of the MDUK system provides
a variety of reports on all aspects of the audit findings,
which can be downloaded directly into our management
reports. It took only a couple of months to implement
and did not require lengthy or complex integration with
our internal systems. The auditors have had no problem
using the system and it has given us the confidence
crucial in our industry to ensure audit information
is visible, reliable and up to date.’
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