Liberty is an award-winning property services business that delivers property repairs, maintenance, renewable energy, gas services and construction projects across the UK. Known for its exceptional quality and commitment to clients, customers and wider communities, Liberty regularly invests profits into social purpose projects and building homes. To meet these goals and deliver top services to its customers, Liberty runs a fleet of more than 800 vehicles.

So it is no surprise that Liberty is bringing the same commitment to taking care of its people to the company’s COVID-19 response. Sam Greenwood, Head of Fleet Management for Liberty, explained, “It’s a tough time for everyone. Many of our customers are social housing tenants, and we are responsible for keeping their homes safe and well maintained. We have a responsibility to these people, but also to make sure our engineers are safe and protected, and working in line with the latest Government advice.”

With communities asked to stay on lockdown, Liberty is taking pains to protect their staff and their customers, while continuing to deliver the services their customers need to be safe in their homes. The company has had to shift its day-to-day operations and introduce new protections and precautions for their employees.

“Changing processes created a lot of pressure on internal teams, but they’re all working really well to handle this crisis. We needed to introduce new processes that kept our people safe and still allowed us to deliver excellent services.”

The company is relying on Samsara’s complete fleet platform to help them adapt to the rapidly changing circumstances, offer world class service and protect their drivers. 

Delivering in challenging times

One of the key challenges in these uncertain times is adapting to the demands on the fleet. While the nature of Liberty’s work is sometimes reactive, the arrival of COVID-19 has added new urgency. “The main challenge of our work is its varied nature. Whilst a lot of work is planned, the nature of property repairs means that a big part of it will always be reactive,” explained Sam. “We’re doing lots of planning to make sure that we continue to keep customers safe in their homes, despite the challenges the coronavirus is putting forward.”

In their first two months as a Samsara customer, Liberty is already able to see the impact of real-time visibility into their drivers and vehicles. The fleet team uses Samsara’s live-to-the-second vehicle tracking information to identify where their vehicles are at that very moment. According to Sam, this real-time data is particularly useful when dispatching on-call engineers. His team can use the Dispatch feature to identify who is on-call and located in the closest proximity to new jobs that arise. Using Live Sharing, Liberty fleet managers can then easily and simply communicate arrival times to customers.

Samsara’s harsh event alerts are also helping to keep their drivers safe. A month ago, before the crisis started, Liberty had a driver involved in an accident. Sam received a crash alert and was able to reach the driver and understand what happened within minutes, before sending the details straight to the insurance company.

“The information Samsara provided enabled us to respond in the right way, at the right time, ensuring the health and safety of our engineer and minimising risk."

This service takes on newfound importance as driver safety becomes paramount in these times. It will also help Liberty reduce costs by exonerating innocent drivers, which will provide operating efficiencies to the company.

Straight-forward technology to solve complex challenges

Part of the reason Liberty has been able to adapt so quickly is by using technology that has the benefit of a complete platform. Everything they need, from AI dash cameras to live vehicle data to in-depth reports - is in one place.

“Having everything on one, centralised platform allows us to work more efficiently, gain new visibility and save critical time."

Samsara’s accessibility and ease-of-use has also helped the Liberty team onboard and respond quickly. “For us, the usability of the system has been great,” said Sam. “Compared to the competition, Samsara’s system is much more user friendly, intuitive and easy to get familiar with.” Now, Liberty fleet managers can quickly and easily access the data about the fleet that they need to run at high efficiency, even during this time of great change. 

Despite only on-boarding with Samsara two months previously, Liberty has already been able to install more than 600 devices thanks to the plug-and-play nature of Samsara’s hardware. “From a fleet perspective, the installation process was quick and fast. Without needing to commission each unit, there’s less downtime for managers and engineers, which makes the process much easier,” explained Sam. This ease of installation makes it simple to scale quickly, helping the fleet stay nimble and support their customers with minimal disruptions.

This is only the beginning of the partnership between Liberty and Samsara. “We are 100% sure that this was the right decision,” said Sam. “Samsara’s desire to make the product fit for our business has been exemplary, absolutely great, and the understanding from the team about our business is spot on. We have a great relationship.”