Establishment Planning - Train and Station Staff Scheduling Software

This Early Market Engagement is to gain a better understanding of the market and all options available for the supply of scheduling software. Information gathered throughout this exercise will then be considered throughout the creation of the business case for these services and aid the future contracting decision and procurement strategy for TfL.

TfL require scheduling software, to provide rosters for train and station staff. To support the planning and rostering of staff to ensure that there is always sufficient coverage for both trains and stations. Our current scheduling software provides us with the Train Staff Scheduling System (TSS), which produce duty schedules and rosters for all London Underground (LU) Lines (representing 11 lines and nearly 3000 train staff) and the Station Staff Scheduling System (SSS), which produce rosters for all grades of staff, comprising of more than 5000 employees working at 270 locations, producing more than 1000 annually. The supply of support and maintenance of the train staff scheduling system, comprises 1000 hours of support for enhancements and development as well as maintenance including multiple scheduled updates each year.

The current system is customised for LU to create anonymous duties over the 7-day week with several scheduling outputs including permanent rotas for shift planning and tools for on the day management.

Staff Scheduling Team Overview: The Staff Scheduling team produce duty schedules and rosters for all Train Operators and Station Staff across all eleven London Underground lines. Our focus involves forward planning of train work and station activities to ensure that all tasks are mapped to duties. Employee assignment and real-time on the day alterations and coverage are not in scope as these activities are the responsibility of other teams using other systems.

Any future system investment must include:

• Automated production of rosters
• Automated production of duties for all train work/tasks in a 24-hour period
• Intuitive user interface that enables user configurable parameters

Train Staff Scheduling - Train Staff Scheduling aims to break up the train work from a timetable into duties that are compliant with agreed scheduling parameters. This is currently carried out using a mixture of automatic and manual processing.

Train Staff Scheduling software requires the ability to:

Import a set of timetable files - These are produced by the Timetables team using a separate in-house application for permanent long-term scheduling and for temporary engineering and bank holidays.

Setting and adjusting of scheduling parameters - To manage the control of Trade Union framework agreements and margins such as for maximum driving time and meal break allowances.

Automatic duty compilation with end user configurable parameters - To reach the best viable solution it needs to be possible to adjust settings to manipulate the results of the final duty solution such as to ensure a balance of duties across the different personnel locations on a line.

Manual duty compilation that is compliant with scheduling parameters - To make manual changes after automatic compilation to ensure the solution will meet the operational needs of the business while being validated against the set scheduling parameters.

Automatic roster compilation with end user configurable parameters - To populate a roster with the duties that have been compiled to be followed by each train operator.

Manual roster compilation that is compliant with scheduling parameters - To make manual changes after automatic compilation to ensure the solution will meet the operational needs of the business while being validated against the set scheduling parameters.

Production of duty schedule and roster reports - Export in a word-based format of required outputs

Duty Schedule: A list of anonymous duties each showing the book-on/off times and locations and the train work to be carried out by a train operator. The combination of all duties on the schedule covers all timetabled train work.

Roster: A list of permanent duties and rest days for train operators to follow on a weekly basis.

Exporting of SAP files - For separate loading into a SAP based system where staff assignment is carried out by other parts of the business.

Station Staff Scheduling - Station Staff scheduling aims to ensure each station has the required minimum number of staff on duty and that key station tasks are assigned to duties throughout the day. Many tasks are grade dependent and up to 7 different grades are scheduled across a group of stations, with the network broken down into multiple areas and groups. This is carried out using a mixture of automatic and manual processing.

Station Staff Scheduling software requires the ability to:

Import a set of workload files - These are csv files produced by different teams with information such as station opening times and passenger demand requirements.

Setting and adjusting of scheduling parameters - To manage the control of framework agreements and margins such as for maximum working time and meal break allowances.

Automatic duty compilation with end user configurable parameters - To reach the best viable solution it needs to be possible to adjust settings to manipulate the results of the final duty solution.

Manual duty compilation that is compliant with scheduling parameters - To make manual changes after automatic compilation to ensure the solution will meet the operational needs of the business while being validated against the set scheduling parameters.

Automatic roster compilation with end user configurable parameters - To populate a roster with the duties that have been compiled to be followed by each member of station staff.

Manual roster compilation that is compliant with scheduling parameters - To make manual changes after automatic compilation to ensure the solution will meet the operational needs of the business while being validated against the set scheduling parameters.

Pro…