Driving America Forward with Chris Pyne
“The access to information is especially important because it’s allowing us to focus on our number one priority: getting students to and from school safely, and on-time.“
Chris Pyne
Operations Supervisor
Zum
Chris Pyne moved to America from Ireland 8 years ago. For 6 of those 8 years, he worked in operations and online fulfillment, overseeing a warehouse and transportation team. After a brief stint in service management, Chris was excited to return to operations at Zum, where is now Operations Supervisor for the San Francisco bus yard. Chris is passionate about serving the SF community through transportation, and is enjoying the challenging but rewarding environment at Zum.
In your role at Zum, how do you think about innovation?
I’m currently Operations Supervisor here at Zum, and in that role, the thing I’m most impressed with is the access to data and information.
I’ve worked in operations in other companies and other industries, and I have to say, the amount of information we have access to is astounding. Every bus route, the time it departs, arrives, when it’s delayed, which students are on which buses—it’s all accessible at the tap of a button. You don’t have that level of granularity in other places. And it’s particularly important because we’re not moving packages around—we’ve moving students, children, the most important cargo you can think of.
The access to information is especially important because it’s allowing us to focus on our number one priority: getting students to and from school safely, and on-time. In operations, we’re laser-focused on on-time performance, and all of that data I’ve mentioned is empowering us to figure out how to make things even better. I’ve only been at the company three months, but even in that time we’ve made big strides toward higher on-time performance (which was already high), and we’re going to continue doing that—all because of the data we have access to. I’d say that data access is a critical innovation.
From your perspective, at a company-wide level, how is Zum driving American innovation forward?
I think the same thing applies at the company-wide level.
Zum has unprecedented access to data in all levels of its operations. Yes, on the buses, and with each student on every route—but they also have access to all of this data from every bus, how far it drives, the routes, if they’re EV buses, how much charge they have left, when and for how long they’re plugged into their chargers, all of it.
All of that data is empowering our company to serve our community the best way we know how—and because we have data, we’re not guessing. We’re looking at the numbers and determining how we can make the lives of our students and families better every day. That’s a real innovation.
When you think of the future, what role do children/the next generation play, and how can we set them up for success?
When I applied to Zum, one of the things that appealed to me most was that the company serves children.
In other operations roles I’ve had, I’ve been moving packages and cargo around. But these are students. And every time our bus is on time, it’s less time that students spend on the bus, and more time they have at home, or to study, or play sports, or literally anything else. That’s really important, and so for us at Zum, I think one of the best things we can do is be as efficient as possible, so students have as much time back as they can to do other things other than sit on a bus.
The second thing I think we can do is continue hiring really good people. I rode a school bus in Ireland for years. My bus driver was a really kind woman who always said “Good morning” and “Good evening,” and would always ask how my day was, and it really made a difference for my experience. I still see my bus driver when I go back to Ireland, and I remember what a great job she did, and I say hello and I thank her. I’m lookimg forward to my next visit home and sharing with her that I now work for a student transportation company.
The same thing is true of our bus drivers here. We take a lot of care when we hire, and the bus drivers here take their jobs seriously. They’re being good to our students, and the students are going to remember that when they look back on their experience. Zum is setting these students up for success in the long term by giving them a transportation experience that’s really supportive and meaningful.