Grampian

Well, for those who have never used the Grampian system it is the one that is most used in the bus and staff allocation system. There is no point explaining to much here, as if you have used it you will know and if not well it would just take up to much time.

Suffice to say that all details of the duties the staff worked and the driver details, pay numbers, holidays, days taken off sick and many other details were put in the system. It was a steep learning curve and I was involved right at the beginning of it. Two men who were experts on the computer side were bought in, but they knew nothing of the day to day running of the Allocation side of the company.

As the supervisor who was my senior was on holidays I was there to input the details of the working side of it. This took a lot longer than was first thought as our job is very complicated and many changes took place over months before it was ready to go. Then there was a trial run were the computer system and the manual system were worked together for a few weeks until they were sure that everything was as it could be.

Eventually of course it went on-line and we were off. As with all changes, some took to it better than others. I enjoyed it from the start and had no problem. Others were not so keen and could not take to it. Two friends left the company partly due to this I think.

But the work went on as usual with others bought into the team. As with all large companies, the work goes on no matter who leaves.

We used this system for a few years and although there were faults and frustrating things with it we got used to it. And then Grampian 2 came in. More about that and the changes that came with it later.