We're going to be talking about risk management.
2
:So a few years ago, I was CEO of the
transit agency in Baltimore, the MTA.
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:And, uh, I developed what I thought
were seven good steps to safety.
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:And one of them was to, um, not
make a mountain out of a molehill.
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:What do I mean by that?
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:Well, so many times we were
putting together training programs.
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:For our safety department and they
were based on anecdotal evidence,
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:stories that people would tell.
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:I can tell you that that's
how government works often.
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:It works on stories.
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:Somebody comes in and um, I remember one.
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:I'll tell you.
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:I walk in, uh, I was county administrator
of Queen Anne's County, Maryland and I
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:walk into a county commissioner's meeting
and one of the commissioners is, Comfort!
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:A neighbor of mine told me the trash
pickup was 30 minutes late this week.
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:What in the world is going on?
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:We need to get on that.
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:I was able to show him data that shows
that 98 percent of the time our pickups
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:are on time, but this was an anecdotal
situation that we will look into.
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:We'll solve the problem for the customer,
give them a free month, etc, etc.
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:That's the way government runs.
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:That's the way safety programs often run.
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:They run based on anecdotal evidence.
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:So, I was at this class, I was leading
with about 25 30 people from our agency
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:around the table and I was telling them
about this, that we really need to focus,
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:we only have so much money, we only have
so much attention from the drivers, we
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:need to focus our attention on training
programs that are based on data and not
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:on a situation, an anecdotal situation.
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:One of the people on the table
said, oh yeah, I know, just like
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:yesterday, I saw a female driver
put her purse up on the dashboard
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:of the bus as they were driving out.
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:That would be, you know, block her view.
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:We need to do a training
program about that.
34
:And I said, no, that's exactly
the opposite of what I just said.
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:That's what we don't need to do is
do big training programs based on
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:one incident that you've observed.
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:We need to gather data about where
the incidents are occurring, how
38
:they're happening, and then use that
data to better train our drivers
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:and our dispatchers and our safety
personnel to make sure that we are
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:getting the biggest bang for our buck.
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:That's what this brand new
software product called RISC does.
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:Sabrina Blais is the project,
or the product manager for that.
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:Sabrina, tell us, what is RISC?
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:Sabrina Blais: Thank you, Paul.
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:So, RISC is a, um, a new piece of
software that is designed to solve
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:for that very problem and to help
agencies who are implementing PTASP
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:for the first time um, be able to
move from gut instinct to data driven.
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:Uh, and we do that with a incident
management database where they can
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:compile everything happening at their
agency all in one place so that they
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:have a good overview of what's happening
and then process that through workflows
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:to make sure that our processes are
all what we expect and are standard
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:and that we understand how to respond.
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:Uh, and then we take that data and we
use it to drive safety assurance and risk
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:management and to surface it in dashboards
so that your team can actually action on
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:that data and know, um, you know, what
that data is telling you and then use it
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:to solve for problems like you just had.
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:Instead of building a training,
uh, program around one particular
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:incident, you can trend what
kind of incidents you're having.
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:And if there's something about those
incidents that are the same so that
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:you can then, uh, action on that.
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:Paul Comfort: Very good.
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:So this is a new product that's
been developed over the last
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:few years and it's just...
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:what this industry needs.
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:I mean, we brought a couple guys
from a transit agency that are
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:using it and uh, Chris Tuf is deputy
c e o at Centro, the central New
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:York Regional Transit Authority
at Upstate New York and Syracuse.
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:Thanks for being with us here today.
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:Good morning, Paul.
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:Thanks for having us.
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:Absolutely.
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:And then Ramin Ria is Associate Vice
President of Operations at Centro.
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:He helped implement it, so we're
gonna talk to them today about how
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:this is used right now in a transit
agency and how it was implemented.
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:So, Chris, tell me a little bit
about yourself and your agency.
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:Chris Tuff: So, we're, as you
said, Centro in Syracuse, New York.
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:We operate in four counties
with five locations.
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:We're a mid sized transit
agency per APTA standards.
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:We operate 199 fixed route
buses and 42 paratransit buses.
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:It's strictly bus.
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:We have no rail.
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:Um, 7 to 10 million rides a year,
depending pre pandemic, post pandemic.
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:you know, and about 600 employees,
uh, 510 or so are unioned.
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:Um, we have five different unions
across those four counties.
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:Um, so we're, we're right in the heart.
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:Syracuse University is a
big part of our business.
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:Um, you know, and we have a great
connection across the Thruway
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:with CDTA, Rochester, and Buffalo.
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:Paul Comfort: That's great, Chris.
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:Now, we all know that the number
one key performance indicator
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:for a transit agency is safety.
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:So how would you use, or how are
you using a product like this?
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:to improve your safety at your agency.
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:Chris Tuff: Uh, this is a key thing,
especially, I'm the, uh, internal control
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:officer for our organization, so this
is huge for us to start tracking data.
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:Uh, currently we use a 17 page handwritten
accident report for our supervisors.
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:Get that, 17 page.
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:Yes.
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:Uh, it's morphed over the years
to track many different things,
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:mobility device accidents, passenger
slip and falls, um, and we just
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:keep adding pages to track that.
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:But, right now, everything is done
manually, so once the supervisor fills
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:out the report, it gets turned in, and
then it's manually entered into an Access
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:database that currently we have one person
on staff that knows how to operate Access,
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:um, and pull reports, or if we broke
the system, she can go in and fix it.
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:But, outside of that, we're limited to
our resources, and we have 20 years worth
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:of data in that Access database today.
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:Paul Comfort: Wow.
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:Access.
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:I remember that.
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:25 years
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:Chris Tuff: ago.
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:Yeah.
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:And, and that's the...
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:The situation we're dealing with, and
we've been trying to look at different
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:opportunities for the last six years.
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:We've tried to build this in Excel.
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:We've tried to look at
other, uh, programs.
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:And, you know, integrating this
with Trapeze is huge because
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:we already have Trapeze.
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:We've been a customer
of Trapeze for 25 years.
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:Paul Comfort: That's great.
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:And so, um, what, is that one of the main
reasons why you chose to go with RISC?
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:Why did you want to go with this product?
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:Chris Tuff: The tracking that Sabrina
was just talking about, to be able to
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:pull those KPIs, set those benchmarks,
um, as you mentioned at the start of
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:the, the intro, you know, the PTAS
that now is being set in place for, for
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:bus agencies that never had rail, are
now forced to track these, set goals,
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:look at the benchmarks and say, okay,
what are we seeing an increase in?
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:What are we seeing a decrease in?
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:You know, how do we readjust some of our
training to fix, we have an influx of left
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:hand turns at this intersection, or...
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:Um, you know, just a new driver
class came in, so we really need to
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:focus on this as a training point
and maybe we can cut, scale back this
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:portion to focus on this because we're
seeing a large increase of accidents.
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:Paul Comfort: That's great.
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:Raman, tell me about the
implementation process.
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:Rahmin Azria: So, uh, the implementation
so far has been, uh, great.
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:A little closer.
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:It's been, uh, great so far.
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:Uh, Sabrina is awesome.
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:I mean, she, uh, she's really
taken our chaos and turned
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:it into something coherent.
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:Um, you know, we, we have, um, Certain
reporting requirements, um, whether it
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:be federal or state, uh, and, and those
are usually triggered by, by answers to
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:questions, thresholds to, you know, what
the, um, the accident, uh, damage was.
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:So, we really have to, um, make sure that
we're, we're reporting accurately and,
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:um, and, and then there are things that
happen after we re make those reports.
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:So, how does it all flow
through the organization?
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:There's a lot of places
where things are missed.
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:Um, so this is...
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:Really, um, it's been a great exercise
because we really understand how things
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:are being missed and, and putting all this
together to try to fix, um, you know, our
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:processes and, and have an established
workflow is, um, it's, it's been great.
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:Yeah.
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:Paul Comfort: That's good.
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:You know, post pandemic, we've had
a real challenge in getting staff.
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:A lot of folks left during the pandemic.
159
:And, is, it ends up...
160
:Like at the end of the Raiders of the
Lost Dark movie in these big boxes that
161
:are put at the end in a warehouse in
the back, and you're never able to get
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:that, get to that data to do tracking
so that you can make good decisions.
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:Am I right?
164
:Chris Tuff: Oh, absolutely.
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:And in looking at the trends year over
year, pre pandemic, post pandemic,
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:I, you know, we still talk about
that pre pandemic world, um, but
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:realizing we're changing outta that.
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:How do you track that?
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:Where are you coming from that and, and
to your point with people leaving the
170
:industry, You know, one of the first
things we do is, okay, you get a piece
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:of his work, you get a piece of his work,
and we don't replace that individual.
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:So now, the knowledge, the
expertise, the background is lost.
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:But, and this is kind of what we're
finding, we, we sat with Sabrina, I
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:think, last week, for eight hours,
going through the process, and started
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:picking up holes where we were like,
Oh, well, what happens when you do this?
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:And we all looked around the table,
and we're like, I don't know.
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:Um, so, you know, it, it figures
out, or it works, but, you know, we,
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:we picked up on those things, and,
and to help fill that position that
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:is no longer there.
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:Paul Comfort: That's good.
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:Sabrina, tell me about this.
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:So, another interesting incident from my
past that this product could have helped.
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:Uh, when I was at the MTA, we were
looking to try to, when we finally got
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:them to start looking at, uh, where the
accident's occurring, we found a lot of
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:them were occurring right on the bus yard.
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:And there were many accidents
that were happening as the drivers
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:came in to vault their buses.
188
:And there was a pole in the wrong place.
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:And they would keep scraping it,
knocking off mirrors, hit into it.
190
:And people saw anecdotally that it
happened, but there was never anything
191
:done about it until it was tracked and
reported and we saw on a chart that
192
:all these incidents were occurring.
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:Think about the cost that was involved.
194
:Every time a bus was out of the
fleet, then we had to go and take
195
:it to the shop and have it repaired.
196
:The hourly wages that
were involved in that.
197
:Tell us about how risk can
save money for an agency.
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:Sabrina Blais: So I think
that at agencies, in my
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:experience, two things happen.
200
:So the first is that you get
used to seeing something happen.
201
:And then you, it, it, you cognitively
sort of gloss over it because you're
202
:used to seeing it all the time.
203
:Um, and then the other one is that
things get addressed when they feel bad.
204
:And so, on any given day, something
might feel much more terrible than this
205
:thing that's happening a hundred times.
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:So the goal of RISC was to be able to
surface to you what is actually happening,
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:where are those things actually happening,
so that you can, uh, pinpoint the things
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:you really do need to address instead
of the things that feel the worst today.
209
:Paul Comfort: Raman, what else do you
want to tell us about the process?
210
:Rahmin Azria: Yeah, I mean, uh,
from, from the very beginning, again,
211
:Sabrina's been great, um, and, uh, really
it's, it's been pretty, pretty easy.
212
:Sabrina Blais: You know, that's
to implement risk for them.
213
:But we've moved into a little bit
of, of, if I'm going too far, I'm
214
:trying to help you discover your
process and make sure that it's,
215
:that it's what you need it to be.
216
:Rahmin Azria: The other, I'm sorry,
the other thing I was going to say is,
217
:it seems like as we were going through
the process, we keep thinking of other
218
:things this software could apply to.
219
:I mean, you know, whether it be
applications to training, you know,
220
:seeing trends and applying those to, Uh,
training our, our drivers and um, you
221
:know, human resources, um, forms that
need to be filled out and there, there's
222
:just a lot of applications that we can
tie together with this application.
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:Sabrina Blais: I think you added
rule violations the last time we met.
224
:Yes, violations, that's
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:Rahmin Azria: correct.
226
:That can be sent right to our, um,
our, our safety people as well.
227
:So I mean, it, it really is great.
228
:Paul Comfort: So Sabrina, sounds
like if, uh, an agency was to get
229
:this software to implement it,
they're going to get very hands on.
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:Uh, assistance from us.
231
:Sabrina Blais: Yeah, it's a two
way learning process right now,
232
:obviously as a new piece of software.
233
:Um, we want to make sure that if
we have gaps, or that if we need to
234
:make improvements, that we're, we're
doing that hands on, um, as we go.
235
:So, so yeah, right now, anyone
who's implementing RISC gets a
236
:lot of hands on attention from me.
237
:To make sure that we can develop
processes that work for agencies as
238
:well as for trapeze to make it efficient
and to make sure that you're getting
239
:the most use out of it that you can.
240
:Paul Comfort: That's great.
241
:I'm real excited about this product
and we're going to wrap up in just a
242
:minute but if you want to know more,
you can come up and talk to them or Tim
243
:Bigwood is here and Teresa Domingo who
heads up all of Trapeze is here as well.
244
:They're happy to talk to you about it.
245
:Give us the final wrap up, Chris.
246
:Chris Tuff: You know, the product, it,
kind of what we were talking about,
247
:it's, it's shining light on the way
we've always done it, looking at things
248
:differently, shake, you know, shake it
up, the, the process to streamline it,
249
:to get the information to the people that
need to make the decision or make the
250
:changes, to get that addressed, I mean,
I think one thing we really look at in
251
:government is things take forever, you
know, how many times we talk with our
252
:drivers, like, I thought we were going
to do that, well, the procurement process
253
:to get this or do that or set the policy.
254
:But if we can streamline this information
and have a hands on dashboard to get
255
:that information real time, we can
start the process to initiate that
256
:instead of waiting down the road.
257
:So, we're really excited to see this
actually come to fruition and actually
258
:start using it to set those KPIs
and hopefully maybe it turns into
259
:an incentive program or somewhere
with an incentive program for the
260
:employees to show that we're actually
hitting these goals that we set.
261
:Paul Comfort: That's awesome.
262
:Thank you all for being here today.
263
:Let's give them a round of applause.
264
:Rahmin Azria: Thank you.
265
:Thank you.
266
:Paul Comfort: Thank you.