Cost-effective SMS solution contributes to 64% reduction in unused reserved spaces
London, 17 August, 2011 - PageOne Communications, the UK’s leading provider of mobile messaging solutions to the public and enterprise sectors, today announced that EDF Energy is deploying its two-way SMS messaging solution, PageOne Connect, to effectively facilitate its corporate green travel scheme. The programme has been adopted to help reduce congestion with more effective car parking management, supporting the delivery of its commitment to achieving a 20% reduction in carbon emissions from its transport by 2012.
The scheme is in operation on two of its sites in the South East of the UK – Hove, and Worthing. There are over 2,000 staff based across the two sites with 500 parking spaces available. The programme promotes car-sharing and environmentally-friendly modes of transport while prioritising the existing 500 car parking spaces for members of staff whose circumstances leave them with the greatest need to drive.
Each day around 50-100 parking spaces are released by employees who no longer need their space the next day. Members of staff who are not a priority for parking can text into the 24 hour service to apply for a parking space. They then receive an automatic reply in the afternoon via PageOne Connect informing them if their application for the following day has been successful.
Previously EDF Energy had notified staff on the reserve list by email. However, many staff didn’t receive the email before they left the office or had no record of the number of their parking space when they turned up for work the next day. Employees now receive a text every afternoon informing them if they have successfully been allocated a car parking space and the number of their bay.
“We have worked extremely hard to establish a successful green travel scheme. PageOne’s 2-way messaging service has made it a lot easier for our employees to manage their parking requests, contributing to a 64% reduction in unused reserved spaces,” said Gary Oliver, EDF Energy’s Project Lead. “It has helped reduce the number of car journeys by staff, which helps cut carbon emissions and its ease of use has gone down very well with staff.”
Looking forward, EDF Energy’s green travel team also plan to use PageOne Connect for their contingency planning as a timely and cost-effective means of communicating urgent messages to all staff at Hove and Worthing.
“The provision is there for us to instantly inform all staff if part of the car park is forced to close due to incidents such as bad weather, an emergency or urgent maintenance. This facility would definitely have been useful in previous years,” concludes Gary Oliver.
Darren Towers, EDF Energy’s Head of Sustainability said: “Green travel is one of the many ways we are working to reduce our carbon emissions. Our Sustainability Commitments set out how we are targeting transport and waste, while we are also working with our customers to reduce the proportion of carbon emissions from their energy use, and cutting the intensity of carbon emissions from our electricity production.”
For further information on PageOne Connect, please visit – http://www.pageone.co.uk/solutions/sms-staff-communication
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About PageOne. www.pageone.co.uk
PageOne is the leading provider of award-winning wireless messaging solutions to the public and enterprise sectors. It has a proven track record of introducing innovative products and services and owns and operates a UK-wide paging network and provides business SMS messaging solutions; PageOne Paging and PageOne Connect respectively.
All PageOne systems are powered by the company’s own flexible platform Oventus, developed to enable the seamless integration of mobile messaging across different networks and technologies. These services have consistently been designed to meet and exceed the demands of an increasingly mobile environment, providing reliable and cost effective communications to thousands of organisations across the government, NHS and major corporate sectors.
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EDF Energy
EDF Energy is one of the UK’s largest energy companies and the largest producer of low-carbon electricity, producing around one-sixth of the nation's electricity from its nuclear power stations, wind farms, coal and gas power stations and combined heat and power plants. The company supplies gas and electricity to more than 5.5 million business and residential customer accounts and is the biggest supplier of electricity by volume in Great Britain.
EDF Energy’s safe and secure operation of its eight existing nuclear power stations at sites across the country makes it the UK’s largest generator of low carbon electricity. EDF Energy is also leading the UK's nuclear renaissance and has published plans to build four new nuclear plants, subject to the right investment framework. These new plants could generate enough low carbon electricity for about 40% of Britain’s homes. They would make an important contribution to the UK’s future needs for clean, secure and affordable energy. The project is already creating business and job opportunities for British companies and workers.
Through Our Sustainability Commitments, EDF Energy has launched one of the biggest environmental and social programmes of any British energy company and the company has since been awarded the highest ranking of Platinum Plus in Business in the Community’s 2011 Corporate Responsibility Index, the UK’s leading voluntary benchmark of corporate responsibility.
EDF is the official energy utilities partner and a sustainability partner of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The company is also helping its customers and others use energy more sustainably through products and initiatives such as Team Green Britain, smart meters and electric vehicle research.
EDF Energy is part of EDF Group, one of Europe’s largest power companies. The company employs around 15,000 people at locations across the UK.
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