PHOTO BY JOHN FRYMAN / THE VILLAGE REPORTER
RESPONSE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE … Bryan Utilities Director Derek Schultz (above) explains the Daupler response management software system at the Bryan Board of Public Affairs meeting on Tuesday, September 16.
By: John Fryman
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
john@thevillagereporter.com
In order to improve after-hours dispatching, the Bryan Board of Public Affairs approved a Daupler response management software system at its meeting on Tuesday, September 16.
Board members in attendance were Annette Schreiner, Bob Eyre, Dick Long, Jim Salsbury, and Karen Ford along with Director of Utilities Derek Schultz and Clerk-Treasurer John Lehner. The roll call was followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.
After lengthy analysis by Bryan Municipal Utilities staff members, Daupler was deemed to be a valuable tool that could be customized for improving the efficiency and operations of the utility.
This will enable BMU to engage more effectively with customers in a wide range of situations, including emergency events or outages, planned outages, and general service notifications.
“It will be used for after-hours dispatching,” said Schultz. “This system is already used by public works, utilities, and municipalities across the United States.”
Schultz noted there will be trained agents and live answering using the BMU criteria in the new system. “It automatically pushes out information to our on-call staff,” said Schultz.
The annual cost for Daupler is $30,000, which includes after-hours dispatching, full response management, customer notifications, and incident tracking.
Schultz added that for an additional $3,000, the BMU gains a comprehensive tool that improves service quality, public engagement and staff efficiency.
“It’s a little bit of the extension of the dispatch,” said Schultz. “This is how the call installation or the team of crew formation when on-call employees are called in.
“It also documents our on-call staff’s arrival and departures and is a little bit of a safety feature to the superintendents and supervisors can monitor those things after hours. They will know when our employees arrive on the site and know they departed the site.”
The call-up feature also uses the automated roster callouts and follows all the BMU policies and labor contracts.
Schultz pointed out one of the analytics of the Daupler is heat mapping. It’s a visual representation of issues in the service area, such as a tree on the line or water in the roadway.
Once the system is installed, customers can opt-in to receive updates about their incident, and they can provide additional information or photos that are shared directly with BMU’s on-call staff.
Board member Bob Eyre questioned Schultz regarding bilingual responses to people when they call in. “That’s a good question, and I will follow up with you,” said Schultz. “I would assume the answer is yes.”
The board then approved a three-year contract with Daupler for response management services beginning January 1, 2026.
A resolution authorizing the clerk-treasurer, director of utilities, and city attorney as designees to attend Sunshine Law certification training for records management policies was approved.
After tabling a motion at the September 8 meeting regarding the BPA’s yearly Parks Tree donation, it was brought up again.
“Due to a reluctance on some of our parts, I’ll say, it was decided to table and hopefully bring it up at this meeting for approval and hopefully have a representative from the parks department here to present,” said board member Jim Salsbury.
Board member Dick Long said that he changed his stance on it, because he didn’t know that it (donation) came from the electric department, which was already budgeted in.
Salsbury made a motion to offer a $4,000 donation to the Parks and Recreation Department for the Parks Tree program, with Long seconding it to approve the donation.
Due to a board member conflict, BPA has changed its meeting date from October 7 to September 30 at 4:30 p.m.