Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson, TN

Collection Procurement Area Definition  (2004-05)

ROC staff, working for a prior employer, analyzed and defined the service areas to be used for a city-wide procurement for curbside solid waste collection services.  The logic employed using route optimization software to define procurement areas that totalled a whole number of complete routes.  With a service area equating to a workload for a truck for an entire workweek, enabled the establishment of small hauler set asides to minimize the displacement of small haluers as they transitioned from open market to exclusive contracted collection areas.  In addition, the providing of the routes to the bidding haulers, levelled the playing field between the small haulers that lacked sophisticated route optimization software, in comparison to, the large haulers that had such technology.

City of Virginia Beach

Multi-phased Waste Route Optimization Implementation (2011-13)

ROC staff, as a sub-contractor to SCS Engineering,utilized various route optimization applications and GIS software to re-route the 124,000 households of Virginia beach over a three phase multiple year implementation that followed the purchase cycle of new higher capacity collection trucks. The City has diverse waste collection issues spanning urban to rural neighborhoods, urban grid to suburban neighborhoods and farms, and 4 different vehicle types and varying capacities. Given the City’s purchasing schedule, new vehicles were replacing older vehicles with a limited capacity over three years, which required extensive re-routing without impacting collection days. The final phase, planned for 2014, will entail a final complete re-route and re-evaluatiopn of collection days. The number of vehicles utilized on a daily basis started at 39, then to 35, and is expected to be 32 in the final phase.

Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government

Route Optimization and Onboard Systems Implementation (2006-11)

ROC staffutilized and implemented two route optimization software applications for the routing of curbside residential waste collection and for commercial waste collection. The project was the spearhead of a larger program to implement onboard monitoring and event tracking systems on LFUCG collection trucks. After extensive development of a customer database for waste collection, the draft routes went through a rigorous evaluation and in-field testing process to verify the exact sequence of every customer. The two route optimization software systems were integrated into both the LFUCG’s internally developed customer service and operations dispatching system and the third party onboard computer system.ROC staff member, Kevin Callen, working for a prior employer, was the project manager and technical lead on the complete re-routing and collection schedule change task for the LFUCG.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Strategic National Stockpile

Route Optimization for Disaster Response(2007-12)

ROC staff team member, Kevin Callen, working for a prior employer, was the project manager and technical lead on designing, developing, implementing and supporting a cloud-based route optimization application for nationwide disaster response for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Ihe online routing application is provided by the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), the national repository of antibiotics, chemical antidotes, antitoxins, life-support medications, and medical supplies to supplement and re-supply state and local public health agencies in the event of a national emergency, such as a terrorist attack or natural disaster. The application, SNSTourSolver, became one of the first federal government applications utilizing cloud computing. It currently has over 900 users from state and local governments nationwide. Its critical use in optimizing the distribution of medical supplies during actual events was highlighted by Director of the CDC presenting the project manager a Certificate of Appreciationfor key assistance in the H1N1 pandemic flu response.

City of Baltimore, MD

Route Optimization of Waste and Recycling Collections (2008 – 2009)

ROC staff team member, Kevin Callen, working for a prior employer, was the project manager and technical lead on the complete re-routing and collection schedule change for the City of Baltimore resulting in an over $6 milllion annual savings for their more than 200,000 households served. The City initiallly intended to only re-route its waste collection in order to realize savings and improve efficiency. Through an analysis of collection costs for six scenarios and presentations by the project manager to the mayor, City executive management, public works management, and union leaders, the project expanded to encompass a complete restructuring of their waste and recycling collection system. This entailed changing the frequency of collection for waste from twice to once weekly, increasing recycling from twice per month to weekly, changing working hours from six 8 hour days per week to four 10 hour days per week, creating balanced boundaries for their four operations districts, creating new and balanced collection days, and creating new and balanced routes/paths for all of their waste and recycling routes. The implemented routes resulted in a reduction of daily operationg collection vehicles from 91 to 64 trucks.

Emerald Coast Utilities Authority

Waste Route Optimization and Route Updates (2008-2009)

ROC staff team member, Kevin Callen, working for a prior employer, was the project manager and technical lead on assisting the Emerald Coast Utilities Authority (ECUA), based in Pensacola, Florida, with developing and implementing new routes to expand its service area and add a new weekly recycling service. ECUAprovides solid waste and yard waste collection to 80,000 households and businesses, but in 2008, extended its service area to include an additional 13,000 homes and added a new subscription-based curbside recycling program. The new routes were developed within a six week turnaround time, but the bigger challenge came during the initial implementation weeks for the “opt-in” recycling program. Exceeding expectations, the piblicityaround the new recycling program added 20,000 new customers within the first month, which required the project team to integrate the new customers and update the routes on a weekly basis until the customer base began to stabilize. In a separate project managed by the same person, route optimization software was used to analyze the collection cost impact on using a privately-owned transfer station versus a nearby landfill.

Miami-Dade County, FL

Waste Route Optimization (2003-2004)

ROC staff team member, Kevin Callen, working for a prior employer, was the project manager and technical lead for the re-routing of Miami-Dade County, FL, as they implemented automated collection. Serving approximately 300,000 households, the County’s residential recycling utilized 75 automated collection trucks increasing efficiency over their previous manual collection.

City of Oklahoma City, OK

Collection Procurement and System Evaluation (2015-16)

ROC staff, working with SCS Engineers, analyzed collection system changes and devised procurement areas utilizing route optimization software. In order to facilitate decision-making and to define the most logistically efficient service areas to go out for bid, ROC first modeled the current collection efficiencies in both the City collected and contractor collected areas. From this baseline modeling, more efficient service areas were drafted for the City to expand its service areas without increasing its fleet size. Areas requiring City and rural collection were revised based on recent and forecatsed population growth. Additional services were assessed, such as full containerization and single stream recycling. Collection cost models were devloped to assist City managers in decsion making.

Collection System Evaluation, Re-routing and Technology Update (2005-08)

ROC staff, working for a prior employer, assisted Oklahoma City to implement automated routing technology to re-route the City’s residential routes. ROC staff lead the analysis of the City’s GIS database to prepare this data for use in a highly complex GIS-based commercial-off-the-shelf waste routing software. ROC staff reviewed and prepared the GIS customer database, analyzed set-out rates and set-out weights of the residential waste customers, utilized the algorthm to develop new collection days and new routes, validated the routes, and developed out puts for implementation (maps, travel directions, customer sequence reports, etc.). ROC staff team member, Kevin Callen, working for a prior employer, was the project manager and technical lead on the complete re-routing task for the City.