Coventry and Solihull Waste Disposal Company is owned by Coventry City and Solihull Metropolitan Borough Councils. Over 70 Operational and Administrative staff are employed at the Bar Road plant, which operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Located less than one mile from the city centre the plant comprises of a new Public Waste Recycling and Disposal Facility and a state of the art Energy From Waste Plant. The busy site recycles as much as possible and generates over 17 megawatts per hour of electricity as well as space heating for a local factory.

The plant comprises a main incinerator building, general public Recycling/Disposal area and several other smaller buildings used for power generation and recycling.

In September 1999 the Facilities manager, Keith Thompson, was ask to find a system that would provide an easy way to monitor employee time keeping and access control to the car parks and plant. The site has many car park barriers to stop unauthorised vehicles entering the wrong areas.

After reviewing different systems they choose a Tensor WinTA system because it properly managed information for the EEC Working Time Directive and it had an excellent Access Control system.

“Our old manual punch card system was very labour intensive and would have been a nightmare with the introduction of the Working Time Directives” said Keith. “Now its easy for the HR department to check timekeeping and for the managers to monitor holidays”

Some of the car park barriers are controlled by Tensor Smart cards and others are controlled by intercoms installed by tensor. The barriers have either two scanners or two intercoms as everything is on two levels. (One for cars and one for trucks) Intercoms are answered by Reception who can activate the barrier from the reception area for visitors without Smart Cards.

Keith said “The Tensor system is very versatile. One thing I like about Tensor is the use of only one scanner per wooden door, by simply mounting it to the back of the door. All other systems needed two!”

Tensor control access to the external lift that leads directly to the heart of the incinerator building. “Tensor really helps with the security of the plant” explained Keith. “We can have as many as 120 contractors here at a time and if they are going to be on the site for more than two days, they are assigned a Smart Card badge by Reception. This means that in event of any emergency they can use the Tensor Fire Roll Call facility to ascertain who is on the site at any point” said Keith. “It's important to have some method of knowing who is on site.”

Keith attended a training session at Tensor Hail Weston Training Centre. “The training was very good and I found the system straight forward” said Keith. “The system is unobtrusive, reasonably easy to use and does what we require”

Customer Information

CSWDC is one of only a few LAWDC,s (Local Authority Waste Disposal Company) remaining. They are a small privately owned Waste Management company, with experience in many aspects of Waste Management including Incineration, Public Waste Site and Landfill. They are owned jointly by Coventry City Council and Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council who have a vested interest in ensuring the company does the best for the community.

The company is committed to comply with with all environmental legislation for the safeguard of our environment. At Coventry & Solihull Waste Disposal Co Ltd (CSWDC) we are committed to the local community and the environment in every aspect of our process. We have close ties to the Environment Agency in respect to all our processes.

For more details of the Public Waste Facility on Bar Road or Trade or Commercial waste services then please visit their website at http://www.cswdc.co.uk