Regina Police Service discovers the power of Geotab

Going from paper to real-time vehicle tracking

While Regina Police is relatively new to its Geotab implementation, it’s already proven its worth. Vehicle reporting and maintenance tracking have always been top of mind for the Regina Police Service but there were struggles. “We were largely paper-based before,” says Matthew. “We had limited knowledge of what was going on in our vehicles, their mileage and very little reporting ability.” Now going from paper logs to Geotab telematics has opened a lot more doors into their fleet’s visibility. “If we truly wanted to take full advantage of the software, we needed to pay attention to real-time insights and engine data in addition to maintenance reports.”

Maintenance made easy with Fleetio integration

With such an expansive fleet, keeping track of vehicle maintenance is equally important. Regina Police uses Fleetio, a Geotab integration application dedicated to managing vehicle maintenance, fuel, repairs and more. “Fleetio has been great! It deserves more recognition for what it does,” says Matthew. For Regina Police, all planned, unplanned and emergency maintenance is entered into Fleetio. As vehicles are replaced on a mileage-based life cycle, having maintenance and telematics information at their fingertips makes replacement planning easier – the more data, the better. This has been especially valuable since the COVID-19 pandemic with new vehicles being in high demand. “I think a lot of fleets across Canada are running on higher mileage than they’re used to because of the supply issues, so being able to better manage the vehicles is important. What used to take hours of searching and estimating is now at our fingertips in a matter of minutes.”

Geotab’s collision reconstruction provides valuable data

Police agencies don’t normally advocate for high-speed pursuits as they oftentimes cause more damage than good, but they do happen from time to time and in some cases, patrol vehicles need to use force to stop offenders. Thanks to Geotab, collisions are accurately detected based on data like speed and g-force. During a recent high-speed pursuit, a Regina Police officer was authorized to immobilize the suspect using vehicle interdiction tactics, ultimately resulting in a collision. Geotab identified the collision the moment it happened. “The amazing thing is the collision alert in Geotab was 100% correct. It identified the collision the moment it happened,” says Matthew. The data from the collision reconstruction report provided information we hadn’t had before. “I was able to run a collision reconstruction report which helped the review team reconstruct what happened from start to finish.”

On the road to implementing a greener fleet

In partnership with the City of Regina, the police service is working towards implementing EVs in its fleet, with a target of working in batches until they’re fully electric. “The challenge with this has been the lack of available EVs right now, but we’re hoping to have some in the fleet in the coming years,” says Matthew. In recent years, the demand for EVs and hybrid vehicles has skyrocketed. Paired with supply issues leftover from the pandemic, many people are facing long wait times to receive their shipments. Geotab’s Electric Vehicle Suitability Assessment (EVSA) can help fleets analyze their data to better determine their EV needs. The EVSA can help fight the range anxiety that many people have been facing. Geotab currently can provide telematics support to more than 200 types of electric vehicles.

Reducing idling across the fleet

Regina Police Service is looking forward to completing a full calendar year with Geotab to see what information they gather. Despite only being with Northern BI for a short period of time, they’ve already started to see improvements across other areas of the fleet. Idling times have been reduced. “Police officers can idle a lot. Getting real-time, accurate data to show how often they’ve been idling has helped. I don’t think we realized this would be as helpful as it is until we started using Geotab,” says Matthew. Not only can idling be hard on the environment, but it also causes wear and tear on the vehicle. “If you talk to any mechanic technician, they typically say to multiply the mileage by 1.5 for high idling vehicles.”

Northern BI provides support anytime, anywhere

A supportive telematics provider is the key to success. Regina Police Service has worked with NBI Business Development Manager, Chris Hudson, from the start of their successful implementation. “Chris was willing to meet anytime and anywhere to chat when we needed to. We had a call once when he was in a busy coffee shop – he could’ve waited until he was somewhere else to call, but he was willing to hop on the phone immediately,” said Matthew. “As someone who has dealt with many companies, response time is always very important throughout both the sales and support process.” Customer Success Manager, Amanda, has also been “nothing but supportive” for Matthew. “She sent me some mock reports to help me decide what I wanted out of Geotab. I’m looking forward to ramping up on the reporting side to see what else the product can offer us including asset utilization.”

As the Regina Police Service continues to adopt the new telematics technology, they’re looking forward to optimizing its fleet even further. “The biggest improvement right now is the real-time mileage information and vehicle location,” says Matthew. “Now that we have that data, we can improve fleet operations, maintenance schedules and vehicle replacement cycles.”

The possibilities are endless when you have the right data. If your business is looking to gain further insight into its fleet operations, contact Northern BI today! We’ve worked with clients across all industries to help optimize and improve their fleet productivity and efficiency.