University Mail Services is cutting pickup and delivery from three times to twice daily beginning Monday to allow faster campus mail delivery times by devoting more staff power to sorting the mail, Physical Plant officials said.
"The beauty of this is that this allows all the carriers to have the time to sort all the campus mail they picked up in time for it to be delivered on the next route," said Tommy Brickhouse, University Mail Services manager. "These drivers were spending most of their day on their routes, leaving little time to sort mail."
Mail collected during the morning run, from 8:30-10 a.m., will be sorted and delivered on-campus during the afternoon run, he said. Mail collected during the 1-2:50 p.m. afternoon run will be ready for the next day's morning run.
Outgoing U.S. mail service will not be affected. As under the current system, all U.S. mail collected during the day will be processed and leave campus at 3 p.m. from Hamilton Hall. However, U.S. mail may be dropped off at Hamilton as late as 4 p.m. and still make that day's last pickup.
The change also will allow the campus messenger service to remain in place, said Physical Plant Director Herbert Paul in a memo announcing the change. It had been considered for elimination.
Time saved by the change will go into keeping up with the rising tide of mail, which in the past eight years has outpaced staff increases, Paul's memorandum said. Since 1987, mail volume has increased 50 percent while staff size increased just 12 percent, or three people. Likewise, U.S. mail volume has risen 22 percent in the past three years.
Brickhouse said departments would receive pickup schedules before the plan was implemented.
The recommendation for the delivery-schedule change came from a special Quality Action Team and was supported by more than 90 percent of managers in a recent survey, Paul said.
The team is part of the Carolina Quality Initiative, a program that emphasizes decision-making using all members of an organization. The eight-person Quality Action Team studying mail services included mail clerks, supervisors, managers and representatives from other departments.
"[Twice-daily delivery] is a thought that maybe had circled around some, but I think the real validation was coming about as a part of that team studying the whole mail process," said Ed Phillips, Physical Plant business manager.
The team is considering other improvements, Phillips said, including a possible consolidation of the Hamilton Hall and Health Affairs mail centers. Such a change would be several years away and would depend on finding a large enough facility, he said.
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