Episode 1

How CENTRO Uses RISC to Improve Safety and Internal Processes

Recorded live at APTA TRANSform Conference and EXPO, Modaxo SVP Paul Comfort leads a panel with Sabrina Blais of Trapeze and Chris Tuff and Rahmin Azria of CENTRO https://www.centro.org/ talking about Trapeze RISC (Risk, Incident, and Safety Compliance) about implementing RISC and how it's transformed the entire agency

Transcript
Paul Comfort:

We're going to be talking about risk management.

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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.

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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

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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.

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And, is, it ends up...

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Like at the end of the Raiders of the

Lost Dark movie in these big boxes that

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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?

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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

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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.

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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.

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And people saw anecdotally that it

happened, but there was never anything

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done about it until it was tracked and

reported and we saw on a chart that

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all these incidents were occurring.

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Think about the cost that was involved.

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Every time a bus was out of the

fleet, then we had to go and take

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it to the shop and have it repaired.

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The hourly wages that

were involved in that.

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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.

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So the first is that you get

used to seeing something happen.

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And then you, it, it, you cognitively

sort of gloss over it because you're

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used to seeing it all the time.

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Um, and then the other one is that

things get addressed when they feel bad.

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And so, on any given day, something

might feel much more terrible than this

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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.

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Paul Comfort: Raman, what else do you

want to tell us about the process?

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Rahmin Azria: Yeah, I mean, uh,

from, from the very beginning, again,

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Sabrina's been great, um, and, uh, really

it's, it's been pretty, pretty easy.

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Sabrina Blais: You know, that's

to implement risk for them.

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But we've moved into a little bit

of, of, if I'm going too far, I'm

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trying to help you discover your

process and make sure that it's,

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that it's what you need it to be.

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Rahmin Azria: The other, I'm sorry,

the other thing I was going to say is,

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it seems like as we were going through

the process, we keep thinking of other

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things this software could apply to.

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I mean, you know, whether it be

applications to training, you know,

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seeing trends and applying those to, Uh,

training our, our drivers and um, you

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know, human resources, um, forms that

need to be filled out and there, there's

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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.

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Yes, violations, that's

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Rahmin Azria: correct.

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That can be sent right to our, um,

our, our safety people as well.

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So I mean, it, it really is great.

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Paul Comfort: So Sabrina, sounds

like if, uh, an agency was to get

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this software to implement it,

they're going to get very hands on.

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Uh, assistance from us.

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Sabrina Blais: Yeah, it's a two

way learning process right now,

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obviously as a new piece of software.

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Um, we want to make sure that if

we have gaps, or that if we need to

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make improvements, that we're, we're

doing that hands on, um, as we go.

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So, so yeah, right now, anyone

who's implementing RISC gets a

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lot of hands on attention from me.

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To make sure that we can develop

processes that work for agencies as

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well as for trapeze to make it efficient

and to make sure that you're getting

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the most use out of it that you can.

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Paul Comfort: That's great.

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I'm real excited about this product

and we're going to wrap up in just a

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minute but if you want to know more,

you can come up and talk to them or Tim

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Bigwood is here and Teresa Domingo who

heads up all of Trapeze is here as well.

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They're happy to talk to you about it.

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Give us the final wrap up, Chris.

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Chris Tuff: You know, the product, it,

kind of what we were talking about,

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it's, it's shining light on the way

we've always done it, looking at things

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differently, shake, you know, shake it

up, the, the process to streamline it,

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to get the information to the people that

need to make the decision or make the

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changes, to get that addressed, I mean,

I think one thing we really look at in

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government is things take forever, you

know, how many times we talk with our

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drivers, like, I thought we were going

to do that, well, the procurement process

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to get this or do that or set the policy.

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But if we can streamline this information

and have a hands on dashboard to get

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that information real time, we can

start the process to initiate that

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instead of waiting down the road.

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So, we're really excited to see this

actually come to fruition and actually

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start using it to set those KPIs

and hopefully maybe it turns into

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an incentive program or somewhere

with an incentive program for the

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employees to show that we're actually

hitting these goals that we set.

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Paul Comfort: That's awesome.

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Thank you all for being here today.

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Let's give them a round of applause.

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Rahmin Azria: Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Paul Comfort: Thank you.

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Tris Hussey

Tris Hussey is the Blog and Podcast Manager at Modaxo and Producer/Editor of Transit Unplugged. Tris is a best-selling author and former tech blogger who turned a passion for technology into a career. After two decades working at various technology, internet, and social media companies, he loves being able to marry his love of technology with his love of public transit at Trapeze. A self-professed transit nerd, he'll take the train to get anywhere if given the chance.