Nerve centre of a responsive business

Across all its business areas, Jarvis uses a wide range of technology to drive productivity improvements, enhance safety regimes and ensure a fair return for the Company while reducing costs to its customers. At the heart of this approach is the purpose-built Control Centre, housed in Jarvis’ modern offices in York.

Protected by the latest security systems and constantly updated with leading-edge technologies, the Control Centre enables Jarvis teams to manage vital operational areas of the business effectively, by maximising the use of resources and ensuring a fast and appropriate response to urgent requests. The Centre is staffed by fully-trained engineering professionals around the clock.

Technology in action
The Jarvis Control Centre uses the latest information technology to monitor operations and co-ordinate a rapid-response emergency service, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Recognised as one of the most advanced facilities of its kind, the centre is linked by local-area and wide-area computer networks to all Jarvis’ operational offices and depots. Sophisticated vehicle tracking systems are used to monitor operations on the ground, ensuring that Jarvis deploys its resources efficiently and effectively. The vehicles are tracked electronically and on giant screens so that the team nearest to a particular incident can be quickly identified and dispatched to undertake each task.

A comprehensive and ever-expanding range of real-time information systems in the field is linked into the Control Centre. These range from wireless digital video cameras, hand-held monitoring equipment and ‘black box’ equipment. As well as the rail business, all Jarvis Highways’ maintenance activities across the UK are also co-ordinated through the Control Centre.

Transparency for Jarvis customers
A range of powerful and sophisticated interactive databases is at the heart of the Control Centre’s operation. These are not only used internally to control Jarvis’ maintenance and installation teams. A number of the Company’s clients have access to these databases via secure web sites, allowing them to monitor the work that Jarvis is doing for them in real time and track the current status of work in progress. This provides total transparency and enables customers to monitor key performance indicators, on demand.

Extending the Control Centre model
The Control Centre team is assisting Tube Lines (the consortium, including Jarvis, which is maintaining and upgrading the London Underground Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines) to create a dedicated London control centre to support its public-private partnership (PPP) contract. This is designed to give the three underground lines covered by the Tube Lines programme access to Jarvis Control Centre technology. This should significantly improve response times to incidents, as well as enabling Tube Lines to manage maintenance work and access to assets more closely and effectively.

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Factfile

• Operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
• Processes over one and a half million incoming calls every year
• Average response time to despatch the appropriate crew in response to a priority incident is less than seven minutes: an industry leading performance
• Connected by real-time data links to Jarvis teams in the field, as well as remote monitoring equipment across the UK
• Web-enabled real-time bulletin boards can be viewed on a secure Extranet site by Jarvis customers, as well as internally