Veco steps up response time on emergencies

Sunday, February 19, 2012

TO IMPROVE its operations, the Visayan Electric Co. Inc. (Veco) announced it has accelerated its response time in attending to emergency calls by investing on the Mobile Tracking System (MTS).

The MTS is installed in emergency vehicles to optimize its mobile assets, as well as to help the emergency crews (e-crews) become highly reliable in its operation.

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MTS is a digital device that has a global positioning system (GPS) locator and data logging system that helps keep track of Veco’s emergency vehicles and the e-crews’ location.

The system is being integrated into Veco’s geographical map for easy location and dispatching.

Veco’s emergency team now operates with reduced travel time and fuel costs since through the use of MTS, the dispatch team can locate the nearest e-crew in the field and request it to respond to calls for assistance.

The number of calls attended by the firm’s emergency team has improved by an average of 31.43 percent since the utility started using the MTS last year.

“With this, an e-crew does not need to log manually the caller details relayed through two-way radio by the dispatcher, but get the instruction from MTS monitor system sent by the dispatcher via a two-way radio frequency (which beeps on every emergency call),” said Armil Logarta, manager of the distribution services department.

“The MTS is a state-of-the-art solution that integrates with GPS technology, wireless communications, transaction processing, and software applications to efficiently manage Veco’s mobile resources,” said Jotham Millana, Veco’s geographical information systems manager.