WESTFIELD—For the city’s department of public works, a monetary total isn’t needed to know how effective their new snow removal program is.
The Westfield Department of Public Works (DPW) unveiled their snow removal organization program SnowOPS late last year, which they hoped would produce more efficient and streamlined snow removal. And according to the DPW’s assistant director Francis Cain, the department got what they hoped they would.
“I feel great about the program,” Cain said. “We created efficiency in other areas and we felt this shouldn’t be different.”
The program, which was developed by the municipal geographic information system (GIS) company PeopleGIS, works by tracking snowplows throughout the city via GPS in the radios that are issued to both municipal employees and 75 snowplows that are contracted with the city. These radios, which are used to communicate with staff, as well as an option to “all-text” the workers in the system on their cell phones, also transmit the position of the plows, which then shows up on two large television screens inside the Ponders Hollow DPW building.
A photo of SnowOPS in action. (Photo provided by Francis Cain)
These screens are watched by someone at all times during a snowfall event who also listens to other public service and emergency radio frequencies in the city, and the person monitoring this dispatches units to where they need to go for snow removal. In addition, there are foremen for the DPW who are out and about in the city, monitoring snow accumulation and finding where plows should go to next, or where they should revisit for further snow removal.
Then, once all the snow removal is done and whatever event being tended to is over, the city can easily pay their contractors through the program, which more efficiently logs their activity.
The initial investment into the program from the city was about $12,000 Cain said, but in time the project will pay itself off.
“In the long run the savings are definitely there,” he said. “May not have the money figure right now but in an efficiency standpoint it saves.”
So far this snow season, the city has spent around $1.01 million, while last snow season they spent just under $775,000.
