Summer is the peak period for the control centre

The summer holidays are in full swing. For many organizations, this is the quietest time of year, with many colleagues, clients and suppliers on holiday. This is the perfect time to answer unopened e-mails or to prepare new projects. For my colleagues at Munckhof Regie, however, the summer holidays are the busiest time of year. This period is all about preparing and planning school transport for our clients, which is a rather daunting task.

Close collaboration with municipalities

Planning new routes starts in the spring, when municipalities are busy creating new pupil registers. Because it's important to get the registers completed accurately and on time, we often help the municipalities compile them. When my colleagues contact parents, they remind them to submit the applications on time so we can get started as soon as possible.

Flawless pupil registers

Once the registers are ready, they are submitted to our colleagues at the control centre. These colleagues check the registers for any mistakes – an extremely important step in the process. If any of the information changes during the planning stage, such as a change of address or the addition of a pupil, this influences the routes and means we have to start over. A flawless pupil register is therefore essential.

Meeting the criteria

When we create the routes, we always adhere to the criteria provided by our client – in this case the municipality. This usually means planning the most efficient route possible, determining pick-up points or determining whether we can combine different forms of school transport. We also take into consideration the experiences from previous school years. When drafting our plans, we use the Mobility Manager, a software program developed in-house. This contains all our transport partners and drivers, which we immediately link to the different routes.

Informing parents

Once we've completed the routes, some time in mid-summer, we submit them to the municipalities for review. They determine whether the routes meet the criteria. Once the municipality approves the routes, we start putting together packages for the parents. In addition to the route information, these packages also contain a transport manual. The drivers also stop by to meet the parents in person. By the time we've completed the process, the summer holidays are over and school transport starts again.

I'm extremely impressed by the outstanding performance my colleagues at the control centre manage to achieve each year. During the summer holidays, they coordinate and arrange transport for thousands of pupils. They are in the office rain or shine to make sure everything is ready on time! Their ultimate goal is to make sure everything runs smoothly when the new school year starts.