Supporting the Shetland Islands Council's ferry operations through Covid-19

The team here at PDMS enjoyed working closely with Shetland Islands Council to help support their passengers through the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Michael Craigie, the Executive Manager of Transport Planning at Shetland Islands Council, explains how the measures put in place by the Compass team helped them over the last few months:

"The Compass System supplied by PDMS allowed us to quickly and effectively put into place measures to address the need for social distancing during the COVID-19 response by extending the account based system of charging for travel from a commercial offering to include public travel requirements.

We were able to very quickly advise the general public of the features of the Compass system and offer an alternative to cash transactions that eliminated the need for physical exchange of money between passengers and ferry crew whilst maintaining the capacity collect fares, albeit through the issue of accounts and invoices as alternative to cash.

As we now move through the various phased of the Scottish Government’s route map we are moving back towards accepting and handling cash where that is necessary, but the introduction of account based payment methods has certainly added another level of flexibility in providing services to the public.

We look forward to continuing to work with PDMS on the Smart Travel functionality and fare products and in the meantime I would thank you and PDMS more widely for your responsive and flexible approach to putting in place measures to deal with COVID-19.

Your capacity to quickly understand our needs, identify problems and find solutions is really helpful."

Find out more about Compass solution and our ferry customers here