Stepping up efficiency in
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public• by ASH LEY TAYLOR cleansingAM I RTE, ASSOC.
METHODS of securing the best return from depots and from vehicle maintenance in the public cleansing service have been the subject of special study by Mr. G. H. Cooper, director of public cleansing, Bradford, whose conclusions were summarized in a paper presented to the IPC Conference at Brighton this week.
When a new depot was under consideration many questions sprang readily to mind, said Mr. Cooper. Were the existing depots in bad positions in regard to new development and, if not, would the plans for the area permit expansion at existing sites or Would fresh ones be required? Would there be enough accommodation at or near existing depots for modern needs? And, if an entirely new site was wanted, was there one available in a planned industrial zone?
Obviously, for economic reasons, a central site had advantages, but was it really such an important aspect? A central depot would involve operational delays due to traffic congestion and it might nowadays be necessary to carry out a traffic survey before site determination.
More often than not the only site available was one that the undertaking had used for years and it then became a matter of developing it to full advantage on the most modern lines, bearing in mind that the premises would be required for years to come, and any serious mistakes would have to be endured for a long time.
Modern building techniques were vastly different from those of even a decade or so ago. At one time the intention was to build for posterity but we now lived in days of planned obsolescence, which might not be too bad a policy. At present which one of us could be sure of our requirements beyond the next few years? Perhaps unit construction would progress so as to provide temporary buildings that would serve satisfactorily. A new site and other buildings could be provided after, say, 20 to 30 years which would be more suitable to the new needs of the undertaking.
Perhaps the most expensive of the running costs involved in depot maintenance was that arising from heating. Nowadays management tended to look to thermostatically controlled heating that eliminated the need for labour, complying with the requirements of the Clean Air Act 1956 at relatively reasonable expense. There was a tendency at one time, about which architects now seemed to be having second thoughts, to provide windows virtually covering the external walls, particularly for offices.
This sort of excessive natural lighting tended to make conditions in the building too hot for comfort in summer and in the winter too cold for satisfactory working, unless excessive heating costs were incurred.
There must be a reasonable norm that in addition to providing satisfactory lighting in normal daytime would not result in uncomfortable conditions during the colder seasons of the year. Natural ventilation was inexpensive but was difficult to control, and consideration might have to be given to artificial ventilation in order to preserve heating costs because there was little point in warming premises if windows were going to be opened and the warmth dissipated.
Fire precautions were a statutory obliga tion but Mr. Cooper wondered how many officers arranged practice drills annually, let alone monthly. There was little point in having equipment and warning notices if employees had not received some training in the use of appliances and the routine procedure in case of fire.
In a small municipal department the responsible officer might well have to rely for maintenance upon the good offices of a local garage. Where the department was of any size consideration must be given not only on grounds of cost, but also of expediency, to the creation of a workshop staff capable of performing major repairs. With the increasing use of continuous compression refuse collection vehicles, and other units employing hydraulic systems, there was an even greater need for a direct labour repair force.
little standardization
Mr. Cooper felt that there were few authorities who really standardized. His understanding of the term was that one type of vehicle only should be used in, say, the cleansing fleet which meant that the whole of the requirements would be purchased in
one year. What most officers accepted as standardization was something different. Many standardized on one make only but with the motor industry geared to rapid change, and only a portion of the fleet being replaced annually, their attempts at standardization were really defeated.
If his understanding of standardization was accepted, said Mr. Cooper, there would be little maintenance of the fleet during the first few years of its life but later expenditure would be heavier and few authorities would wish to work with a biased maintenance scheme. However, the principle might reasonably well be applied in a large department where between 20 and 30 collection vehicles were purchased annually. From the angle of securing a regular flow of maintenance work the second concept of standardization was the better to adopt.
The thorny question of "The effectiveness of incentive bonus schemes based on work study" was examined by Mr. W. A. Turner, cleansing superintendent, Tees-side Corporation. His preparation of the paper, said Mr. Turner„had given him a wider knowledge of the subject and he had come to the conclusion that unreasoned opposition would not help their cause nor stem the advance of work study into local government. It was widely accepted in industry, and it was now part of the national economic policy that local government should make more use of it.
Did the carrot of increased earnings encourage a man to increase his normal pace? Mr. Turner doubted it. What workstudy, coupled with an incentive bonus, did was to buy the time the man would usually waste. The responsibility of retaining the quality of work devolved on the supervisor and where a job had been studied and timed to a specific standard supervision had the right to penalize sub-standard work or ask for it to be re-done without bonus payment.
If in refuse collection bins were missed, refuse spilled, or gates left open, the worker could be instructed to rectify these if he wished to receive his bonus. The same principle applied to gully cleansing. The problem of maintaining quality in street cleansing was not so simple and the usual practice where it had been work-studied and !amused was for the supervisor to assess the quality and grade it for bonus purposes, a most difficult task. In fact, a number of authorities had decided that street cleansing could not be satisfactorily measured and bonused. Among the difficulties in measurement of the work were the variable outside factors, including weather, spillage from vehicles, and litter created by the public.
It was often argued against work measurement that it could have an adverse effect on the quality on the final product. This might well be the case unless management and supervision kept a proper check on the maintenance of the correct standards—but this applied whether the work was carried out under work study or not.
Work study was a temporary palliative for their problems rather than a complete solution, contended Mr. Turner. However, present-day circumstances meant they were going to have work study whatever their opinion of it might be. Mr. G. 0. Allen, Scunthorpe, said they had to look with respect on the man who lifted thousands of tons, walked thousands of miles and handled the foul material that some people designated domestic refuse. They ought to be able to work out what was a fair day's work for a fair day's pay.
Mr. J. Gaskell, Crewe, thought they must have a careful evaluation of the work involved. This could be carried out only by professional work study officers. Having had experience of work study over the'past five years he had come to have a full appreciation of it. Work study was an aid to management and not a panacea for all their ills.
Mr. F. Newton, Shoreham, commented that in practice work study was effective; it was a management tool and was only as good as management made it. Incentive payments, observed Mr. H. M. Ellis, Bristol, enabled them to retain personnel who otherwise would be lost and to recruit a better class of man than previously.
Never before .in the history of public cleansing had the service been subjected to such high pressure publicity methods as had been applied by the paper sack industry, said Mr. R. E. Bevan, director of public cleansing, Manchester, in an exhaustive study under the title of "Sacks in a city". Tests in a separation and incineration plant had shown that the normal methods of screening did not separate the contents from the sack, he said. It f011owed that some further method of disintegration would be needed at the plant unless the collection vehicles used were such as achieved disintegration of the sack as part of the compression, compaction, or rotary movement in the vehicle body.
The paper sack breakthrough came in 1960 when Swale RDC, after six months' experiment, unanimously decided to apply the new system throughout the district. With that move they became the largest authority in the world to adopt paper sacks, and this brought the SRDC correspondence and publicity from as far afield as a New. Zealand village called Tree Tops and the City of New York.
In the autumn of 1961 Manchester commenced a pilot scheme using a 16-18 cu.yd. rear-loading fore-and-aft tipper with a driver and two loaders. As it was a double-cab vehicle the rear compartment was available for carrying the day's stock of replacement sacks. The collection work was organized so that the vehicle accompanied the loaders and the sacks were put directly into it, rather than using the system where the sacks were brought out in advance to await its arrival.
Later the committee decided to extend the use of paper sacks by the conversion of approximately 15,000 collection units in each of the years from 1964 to 1967. In April 1966 polythene tub containers were introduced to replace the metal holders and concrete stands. This was a change that removed all sources of dissatisfaction associated with the holder and fitting.
Local conditions, customs and habits varied very much, said Mr. Bevan, and there was nothing like a pilot scheme, providing it was big enough, and closely observed, to bring the lessons home. The experiments carried out in Manchester on decomposition of paper sacks showed that there were no problems to be expected if -controlled tipping directly by collection vehicles was the method of disposal.
Discussing Mr. Bevan's paper, Mr. C. Hindle of Haringey commented that all realized that labour was going to be in short supply for a long time to come. Sack systems made possible a saving of as much as a third, particularly if the full co-operation of the householder was obtained.
Replying Mr. Bevan said the cost margin between sacks and bins was narrowing all the while, now being down to one ha'penny per household a week. Future possibilities of the "Vacuum system of refuse collection", were examined in a Dawes Scholarship paper, by Mr. A. D. Cretin, a Birkenhead pupil-trainee, who drew upon Swedish experiences in this field. He concluded that the pneumatic transport system of refuse had many advantages over conventional methods. Architects would not be troubled with having to design bigger housings for containers or access routes for heavy vehicles. Housing estates and shopping areas that were using the system would be free from collection vehicles and from the various disadvantages associated with the emptying of containers. Daily collection would eliminate odour, even on hot days, and in the winter collection would not be disrupted by weather.
Calculations showed that the cost of installing the system in multi-storey dwellings of four levels or more could be retrieved over a period of years from savings in labour and transport costs. The system would not at present be economic in housing developments other than multi-storey. In the foreseeable future, as labour costs continued to rise and as the quantity of refuse increased, pneumatic transportation for refuse collection could be installed in houses just as water, gas and electricity were today.
If dairies followed the trend of replacing glass bottles with disposable containers a serious refuse-handling problem would arise, said Mr. David Jackson, Sunderland, in his presidential address. Local authorities would then have to remove more than 200m containers weekly. Such a burden on transport and disposal facilities would demand very substantial investment for its solution.
As a recruit to the cleansing service, said Mr. Jackson, he was told: "Work hard and one day you may have your name on a dust cart." There were now in some places vehicles that he would not care to have his name on. licleansing officers were to nurture efficient cleansing service it behoved them to ensure that their own vehicles and appliances were maintained in a manner that reflected credit on their authorities. As had been observed by last year's Working Party. on Refuse Collection, the standard of coke
lion probably depended more on the quality of the officer in charge than on any other factor. He appealed to the younger members of the profession to take advantage of the Institute's training facilities and once having gained the necessary qualifications to be prepared to move to widen their background and experience. It was hardly encouraging, where forward-thinking local authorites had advertised middle and upper level management posts at adequate salaries to find a dearth of applicants for such situations.