Job Details
The postholder will be part of the School Transport team and will assist the Lead Consultant, School Transport to organise and deliver an effective and cost-efficient school transport network in Fife. The School Transport team is responsible for arranging home to school transport for over 13,000 pupils travelling daily on buses, taxis and minibuses at a cost to the Council of £19M. The successful candidate will be expected to take a leading role in assessing transport entitlement, the planning of school transport contracts and be able to make recommendations on safe walking routes. There will also be a requirement to measure distances, prepare maps and create and modify projects in ArcGIS.
Key responsibilities:
1. Assess the transport entitlement of pupils attending mainstream primary and secondary schools in Fife by applying the relevant eligibility criteria.
2. Measure distances to catchment area schools, along footpaths and on routes along or adjacent to public highways, for pupils attending denominational and non-denominational schools, using ArcGIS.
3. Provide walk route maps for colleagues in the Education Directorate to allow safety assessments to take place and in response to enquiries from schools or parents/carers about transport distance entitlement.
4. Prepare maps and create and modify projects in ArcGIS, including school bus routes, primary and secondary travel entitlement, walk route assessments.
5. Assist with the forward planning of school bus routes by assessing transport entitlement in advance of contracts being tendered.
6. Assist with the design and delivery of the school transport network by considering, population changes, new housing developments, revisions to the road and footpath networks, other infrastructure changes, changes to the school estate, adjustments to school times.
7. Arrange for regular bus operator surveys to determine passenger numbers and trends, analyse the information provided and make recommendations on improvements to the school bus network.
8. Identify pupils that require to travel by taxi or minibus and design school contract specifications.
9. Award school contracts and negotiate with transport providers on price when a change to a contract is required.
10. Work with Council colleagues in other Services and through regular contact with transport providers to investigate and resolve issues affecting the operation of school transport services.
11. Investigate and respond to enquiries and complaints.
12. Take a lead role, including representing the team at meetings, in the analysis of road closure notices and liaise with internal and external stakeholders in relation to roadworks and road closures.
13. Arrange for the monitoring of school transport services to ensure that they are operated in accordance with the contract conditions, legislation and Council policy and deal directly with transport operators where breaches of contract are identified.
14. Undertake walking route assessments with Council colleagues and elected members to determine entitlement to transport on safety grounds.
15. Lead on the implementation and development of a new School Transport Management System (PaxQR) for storing pupil and operator records, managing contracts and route optimisation.
The Person
You will be based in the School TransportTeam, and you should concentrate your supporting statement on how you meet the criteria outlined above in the key responsibilities section. The role profile is generic to Roads & Transportation Services, and not all the tasks and responsibilities will be relevant to this post.
The following is also required:
16. Educated to SCQF level 7, which includes HNC or Advanced Highers or equivalent level of experience in the field of Passenger Transport.
17. The ability to manage own workload, deliver to deadlines and deal with competing priorities.
18. Proven organisational skills and experience of problem solving.
19. Strong IT and analytic skills and the ability to present information in a clear and concise manner.
20. Knowledge of Data Protection Legislation and how it applies to processing personal data.
21. Experience of working as part of a team and the ability to form strong professional relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
22. The ability to communicate with a wide range of people and some previous experience of dealing with the public.
23. The ideal candidate should have a working knowledge of GIS software.
24. Confident in learning new systems and processes.