Härryda municipality has been using Infracontrol Online since 2011 to process fault reports, observations and alarms in the highways and parks area. The municipality has also connected its lighting installations, which are controlled and monitored by the cloud service. Experiences thus far are very good with reduced operating costs and improved service. What’s more, the municipality has gained a number of “new employees” in the form of committed residents who detect and report things that are not working as they should.
Björn Sundén, Traffic Manager for Härryda municipality is pleased with the benefits Infracontrol Online provides:
“Our surveys show that residents to a greater extent than before feel they are participating in the running of their community and that they are better able to influence their immediate surroundings. It’s pleasing to see so many people get involved and it helps us provide better service. And being able to cut action times while also reducing operations and maintenance costs naturally makes things all the more positive.”
Reduced costs and better service
In 2011, Härryda municipality connected to Infracontrol Online in order to gain better control of alarms, fault reports and observations regarding streets and parks. In addition to using the service for this type of case management, Härryda has also connected its lighting installations to the cloud service. The lighting installations are supplied from around 170 lighting centers located around the municipality and these are controlled and monitored with the aid of Infracontrol Online via GPRS.
“Through optimal lighting control and by switching to low energy lamps, we have reduced energy consumption by around 28%, which corresponds to 900 MWh per year,” says Björn Sundén. “In addition to the environmental gains of reduced CO2 emissions, it provides us with savings of almost SEK 1 million per year.”
He tells us that they also have better control over random malfunctions and their remediation. Operations and maintenance work has been streamlined, and Björn reckons they’ve been able to reduce such costs by around SEK 750,000 per year.
“In addition to saving a lot of money we’ve also reduced average fault repair time from the previous 32 days to the current nine days. Which adds up to better service for lower costs.”
Committed residents
Another of Infracontrol Online’s benefits is the opportunity it provides to establish good dialogs with citizens who submit reports about things they feel are not the way they should be, which can involve anything from littering to defective traffic lights. It’s something that pleases Björn Sundén greatly:
“You could almost say this has brought us hundreds of new municipal employees in the form of committed residents who help us keep an eye on everything. In addition to making the usual phone call, residents can also submit reports either via our webpage or our “Fault Report Härryda” app, which is available for iPhone and android smartphones.”
A boon for many municipalities
Jenny Gustavsson, Marketing Manager at Infracontrol is pleased that Infracontrol Online is such a boon for Härryda:
“It’s extremely satisfying when we get to see the benefit our cloud service can bring to a community in concrete figures. It means a great deal to all the municipalities currently considering connection to the service.”
She tells us there are currently around 30 municipalities using the service and an important reason for this is access to a constantly updated service that they share with many others. More users are on the way, so the benefit gained from the Infracontrol Online Community user group will be all the more important for everyone who uses the service.
Download PDF
