Anand's Daily Van Sheet

Put a driver against every van before six in the morning, then print one page to carry to the depot and get it ticked.

Who this is for

Anand Deshmukh runs nine school vans out of a compound off Gangapur Road in Nashik, for two schools with different first-bell timings. He has eleven drivers, two of whom are relief men who float. At quarter to six, standing in the dark with tea going cold on the wall, he decides who takes which van and then walks over to the depot to check each one leaves with the right man behind the wheel.

How the job is done today

It lives in a long notebook with the van numbers written down the left margin and driver names pencilled in beside them, rubbed out and rewritten when someone calls in sick. The calling-in happens on a WhatsApp group at half past five, so half the changes are in the group and half are in the notebook and neither matches. At the depot Anand shouts a name across the compound and waits to see which head turns. When a school rings up in the afternoon asking who drove van 4 on Tuesday, he turns pages back and squints at the pencil.

The screens, in order

1. This morning — Shows every van for today with the driver's name beside it, or a blank space where nobody has been put yet.
2. Put a driver on this van — Lets Anand tap one van and choose a driver for the morning run and the afternoon run from the men who are free.
3. The sheet — Shows the page exactly as it will come out of the printer so he can send it to print and fold it into his shirt pocket.
4. Drivers — Holds the eleven men, their phone numbers and licence dates, so Anand knows who he can actually put on a van.
5. Vans — Holds the nine vehicles, which school each one serves and what time it has to be at the gate.
6. Old sheets — Keeps every past day's page by date so a question about last Tuesday takes ten seconds instead of ten minutes.

What it keeps track of

• Vans — van number, which school it runs for, morning gate time, afternoon gate time, how many seats, which driver usually takes it
• Drivers — name, phone number, licence number, when the licence runs out, whether he is a regular man or a relief man
• The day's sheet — the date, each van with the driver put on it for morning and for afternoon, who called in absent, a line of notes at the bottom
• Absences — which driver, which day, why he is off, who covered for him

The one decision that matters

One page for the whole fleet, or a small slip per van handed to each driver. The slip feels tidier, but it gets the purpose wrong. Anand is not distributing instructions, he is verifying. He walks the depot once and needs all nine vans in front of his eyes at the same time, in van-number order, so a missing name is a hole he can see. So make it one page: nine rows, van number, school, gate time, driver name and phone, and an empty box at the right end of each row. He ticks the box when he sees the man in the seat, writes the substitute's name in the margin if it changed, and the sheet comes back to the office as the day's record.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out the children entirely. No stop lists, no pick-up points, no parent numbers, no messages to parents when a van is running late. That is a different app and it will swallow this one. Also leave out logins for drivers. Only Anand touches this, at quarter to six, alone. The moment a driver can open it and mark himself absent, Anand stops trusting the sheet in his hand, and the sheet in his hand is the whole point.

How you would know it worked

A driver goes off sick at half past five and the relief man walks straight to the right van without anyone shouting his name across the compound. And a month later, the printed sheets are on a spike in the office with ticks and pencil corrections on them.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run nine school vans in Nashik with eleven drivers, and every morning I decide who takes which van. I want a phone app where I keep my vans and my drivers, and each morning I tap a van and pick a driver for the morning trip and the afternoon trip, and it should stop me if I have put the same man on two vans at the same time or if his licence has run out. Then it should make one A4 page for that date with van number, school, gate timing, driver name and phone number, and an empty box against each van where I can tick and sign, so I can print it and carry it to the depot. Keep every past sheet saved by date so when a school asks me who drove van 4 last Tuesday I can find it straight away.