Dynamic workforce scheduling for British Telecommunications plc

British Telecommunications plc (BT) employs thousands of field engineers across the UK to maintain networks, repair faults, and provide service to customers. To allocate work efficiently, BT developed Work Manager, an information system that automates work management and field communications. In 1996, the Intelligent Systems Research group of BT enhanced Work Manager with a dynamic scheduler (DS) based on a combination of heuristic search and constraint-based reasoning. Rolled out in 1997 and reaching 20,000 engineers in 1998, DS with Work Manager is saving BT $150 million a year on operational costs. When deployed over the targeted work-force of 40,000 people, the system will save an estimated $250 million a year.