National Postcodes to be introduced

Tow

tvc15 wrote: »

Is there somewhere that this info is available?

It is available from BearingPoint, it does not appear to be published on the web yet.

recedite

tvc15 wrote: »

As the devil's advocate I would see a few issues around multiple addresses in one building like apartment blocks

It would be reasonable for the code to indicate the lobby of the building, and for each individual resident to use their internal door number (eg Apt. 1 ) as a prefix to the code. All the postboxes are together in the entrance lobby anyway, and from the point of view of the delivery man or ambulance man that is the actual access point they want to find. The same would apply to hotel rooms, nursing homes etc..

tvc15 wrote: »

..the biggest reason of all being that you described the loc8 code which they would be accused of copying (did they not enter the tender?)

Red Nissan wrote: »

Brilliant code that...
Already Loc8 is free, and whilst Google CoOrdinates do the same thing, Loc8 is easier to put in a SatNav...
I was gutted when Loc8 failed to make the cut, not least that it was a Crosshaven based company.

They were actually shut out of the tender due a trumped up clause requiring an existing cash turnover of €40 Million, which turned out to be a contravention of EU rules and also the Irish government guidelines which stipulate that SME's should be allowed to quote for tenders of public contracts.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/eu-raps-state-over-tendering-for-new-postcodes-30498098.html

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

It would be reasonable for the code to indicate the lobby of the building, and for each individual resident to use their internal door number (eg Apt. 1 ) as a prefix to the code. All the postboxes are together in the entrance lobby anyway, and from the point of view of the delivery man or ambulance man that is the actual access point they want to find. The same would apply to hotel rooms, nursing homes etc..






They were actually shut out of the tender due a trumped up clause requiring an existing cash turnover of €40 Million, which turned out to be a contravention of EU rules and also the Irish government guidelines which stipulate that SME's should be allowed to quote for tenders of public contracts.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/eu-raps-state-over-tendering-for-new-postcodes-30498098.html

no stop that misinformation. thats not true, it wasn't a contravention of any EU rule, get the facts correct please.

the commission said that it “could not establish any violation of EU public procurement law that would justify the opening of an infringement procedure”.

all the EU did was ask the government to reconsider their policy.

In relation to the Irish government guidelines on SME quoting for tenders....this was mentioned before with nothing to back it up.... what guideline? show us the source? you can't. because its utter rubbish.

TheBustedFlush

recedite wrote: »

It would be reasonable for the code to indicate the lobby of the building, and for each individual resident to use their internal door number (eg Apt. 1 ) as a prefix to the code. All the postboxes are together in the entrance lobby anyway, and from the point of view of the delivery man or ambulance man that is the actual access point they want to find. The same would apply to hotel rooms, nursing homes etc..






They were actually shut out of the tender due a trumped up clause requiring an existing cash turnover of €40 Million, which turned out to be a contravention of EU rules and also the Irish government guidelines which stipulate that SME's should be allowed to quote for tenders of public contracts.
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/eu-raps-state-over-tendering-for-new-postcodes-30498098.html

This is nonsense.

TheBustedFlush

Tow wrote: »

There is no need for a numeric only system. This is one area Eircode is doing correctly. The Eircode character code Set is 25 characters long and designed to "avoid OCR and verbal confusion".

0 to 9 and A,C,D,E,F,H,K,N,P,R,T,V,W,X,Y

So that gives 25 x 25 x 25 x25 for each postal area - 390,000 possible codes in each of the 139 areas - so that's 54,296,875 codes nationally. So they will have plenty of capacity to apply codes to other things in the future then presumably. You could use them for other fixed structures or landmarks - pitches, bridges, beaches, car parks, tourism spots, POIs, recycling plants, etc.

TheBustedFlush

ukoda wrote: »

no stop that misinformation. thats not true, it wasn't a contravention of any EU rule, get the facts correct please.

the commission said that it “could not establish any violation of EU public procurement law that would justify the opening of an infringement procedure”.

all the EU did was ask the government to reconsider their policy.

In relation to the Irish government guidelines on SME quoting for tenders....this was mentioned before with nothing to back it up.... what guideline? show us the source? you can't. because its utter rubbish.

Agreed - and more to the point, the winning tender consortium has a number of Irish SMEs in it - they were able to tender without any problem.

recedite

ukoda wrote: »

no stop that misinformation. thats not true, it wasn't a contravention of any EU rule, get the facts correct please...

The item in the Irish News refers to Articles 47 paragraphs 2 and 3 of EU Directive 2004/18/EC which says SME's should be allowed to pool resources in order to bid for a contract where the turnover limit has been set extremely high.

recedite

ukoda wrote: »

all the EU did was ask the government to reconsider their policy.

In relation to the Irish government guidelines on SME quoting for tenders....this was mentioned before with nothing to back it up.... what guideline? show us the source? you can't. because its utter rubbish.

I replied to you at the time. Here it is again in case you missed it.
Less of the insults please.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

The item in the Irish News refers to Articles 47 paragraphs 2 and 3 of EU Directive 2004/18/EC which says SME's should be allowed to pool resources in order to bid for a contract where the turnover limit has been set extremely high.

and thats exactly what they could have done? whats your point?

so the tender followed those guidelines. nothing wrong there

Wheres the guideline the tender breached?? this is my third time asking for it.

are you ready yet to concede your allegation is incorrect?

• The tender breached no EU law.
• The tender breached no Irish government guidelines.

larchill

Random_Name wrote: »

I would be in favour of something like this being introduced in Ireland, in addition to postcodes

What a great approach, it or variations of it were mentioned previously here. Regardless of eircode or any other code this would be a valuable undertaking. Use townlands as the locality, name the road, & number the houses using the method indicated. After that use the nearest postal town & there you go But this is Paddyland where common sense is ... :eek:

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

I replied to you at the time. Here it is again in case you missed it.
Less of the insults please.

That shows no breach of any guideline. it merely says the level set should be proportional, and when awarding a 25 million euro contract for a piece of national infrastructure, i don't see how 40 million is disproportional

I've never insulted you. ever.

recedite

TheBustedFlush wrote: »

the winning tender consortium has a number of Irish SMEs in it - they were able to tender without any problem.

Do you mean the likes of tico mail works? Was the owner not also involved in designing this tender that they "won"?
You would not expect an insider to have any problem.

Sam Russell

Random_Name wrote: »

I would be in favour of something like this being introduced in Ireland, in addition to postcodes

This great approach should be part of the contract for Eircode. Many of the objections to Eircode would lessen if a proper address scheme was introduced that identified individual buildings in human readable and locatable form. Requiring a database to find a property is not reasonable.

TheBustedFlush

recedite wrote: »

Do you mean the likes of tico mail works? Was the owner not also involved in designing this tender that they "won"?
You would not expect an insider to have any problem.

That sounds like an attempted smear on someone by you.

recedite

ukoda wrote: »

..and when awarding a 25 million euro contract for a piece of national infrastructure, i don't see how 40 million is disproportional.

We need to differentiate here between the costs of inventing and running a code, which can be quite modest, and the costs of implementing it, which can be astronomical. Changing around IT systems to suit a new address code can be expensive.

There was already a tried and tested code up and running, freely available to the end user, which which is still in use today. Surely it would have been more economical to use the loc8 code as the nucleus of the new national code, even if the govt. would have needed to buy out the license. Once owned, there would be no maintenance costs.

What annoys the ordinary taxpayer like myself is that (whatever way you want to spin it, and whatever exclusionary mechanism was used) this was not even considered.

recedite

ukoda wrote: »

Wheres the guideline the tender breached?? this is my third time asking for it.

On Etenders.gov.ie, see Questions 12 and 13:

etenders wrote:

Question 12:
In Section 6 of PQQ “Evaluation of PQQ Responses .. Financial and Economic Standing”, can you clarify - does this mean that at least one member of a consortium must have turnover greater than €40million?

Answer 12:
As indicated in the PQQ this requirement refers to each candidate or candidate member using as a basis the definitions for candidate and candidate member as contained in the PQQ.


Question 13: In Section 6 of PQQ “Evaluation of PQQ Responses .. Financial and Economic Standing”, is it acceptable that the combined turnover of members of a consortium is greater than €40 million?

Answer 13: No

What is good for the goose should be good for the gander.
Especially when the gander is involved in designing the tender.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

On Etenders.gov.ie, see Questions 12 and 13:


What is good for the goose should be good for the gander.
Especially when the gander is involved in designing the tender.

can you provide an actual link to this page please? i can't find this on the website you listed above

Also, this still doesn't show any breach of a guideline? again - the turnover must be proportional - thats ALL the guidelines say.

TheBustedFlush

recedite wrote: »

On Etenders.gov.ie, see Questions 12 and 13:


What is good for the goose should be good for the gander.
Especially when the gander is involved in designing the tender.

Your argument is sounding more like that of an ostrich - head in the sand stuff.
There is no breach.

As you've quoted, each candidate member of the consortium (are the requirements of what this means defined?) must have annual turnover of €40m. If you don't have that turnover, then find someone who does, and structure your consortium/bid accordingly. This is business basics 101 stuff.

The company that assisted the Dept in designing the tender would not be allowed bid for the tender.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

We need to differentiate here between the costs of inventing and running a code, which can be quite modest, and the costs of implementing it, which can be astronomical. Changing around IT systems to suit a new address code can be expensive.

There was already a tried and tested code up and running, freely available to the end user, which which is still in use today. Surely it would have been more economical to use the loc8 code as the nucleus of the new national code, even if the govt. would have needed to buy out the license. Once owned, there would be no maintenance costs.

What annoys the ordinary taxpayer like myself is that (whatever way you want to spin it, and whatever exclusionary mechanism was used) this was not even considered.

i don't see why we need to differentiate between the 2, we needed a design and a maintenance contract and the tender was for both.

Loc8 code have been in operation for years and have failed (in my opinion) to market their product or get any sort of public use going. no one knows what a loc8 is in the general public. Did they maybe just sit back and expect the government to make them the national postcode?

TheBustedFlush

ukoda wrote: »

i don't see why we need to differentiate between the 2, we needed a design and a maintenance contract and the tender was for both.

Loc8 code have been in operation for years and have failed (in my opinion) to market their product or get any sort of public use going. no one knows what a loc8 is in the general public. Did they maybe just sit back and expect the government to make them the national postcode?

That's far too honest an assessment for this thread....

Impetus

Strawwwbreeezz wrote: »

I used to live in The Netherlands.

The Dutch postcodes are the best.

The format is 1234AB.

Where 1 is the region 2 narrows it down further to town 3 is the part of the town 4 narrows things down again, the the first letter is the actual street and the second one is the side of the street.

The house number can be added on the end.

So, for example, 1234AB12 is sufficient to point to one exact house, no province, town or street needed:-D

If I posted my code you could find exactly where I lived with a single click of google maps :-p

I would have no problem with the Dutch postcode being implemented in Ireland. It complies with the European and international norms in terms of the first four digits. It allows one to give one's postcode without giving your exact address. And as you point out it can be suffixed with the house number.

In Ireland's case, you are still stuck with no house number or road name for 50% or so of addresses. Irrespective of the code system, that will have to be fixed. Road names and building numbers will have to be allocated. Period.

Browse the Dutch postcode system website: http://www.zoekplaats.nl

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

We need to differentiate here between the costs of inventing and running a code, which can be quite modest, and the costs of implementing it, which can be astronomical. Changing around IT systems to suit a new address code can be expensive.

There was already a tried and tested code up and running, freely available to the end user, which which is still in use today. Surely it would have been more economical to use the loc8 code as the nucleus of the new national code, even if the govt. would have needed to buy out the license. Once owned, there would be no maintenance costs.

What annoys the ordinary taxpayer like myself is that (whatever way you want to spin it, and whatever exclusionary mechanism was used) this was not even considered.

your argument here is flawed. If the set up cost is modest (the bit Loc8 code did) then splitting the design part (and giving it to Loc8) from the maintenance part of the tender would have only saved the government a modest amount? a modest amount they would have had to spend on splitting the tenders and another modest amount on paying Loc8 Code a licensing fee?

So i would nearly argue: just simply giving Loc8 code the contract would have saved nothing in tax payer money. if not even maybe cost more.

Impetus

The loc8 code is not a postcode or a pointer to each building. It is a compression of the grid references. People don't live or work in grid references, and even if they did most would find great difficulty in remembering them, especially those belonging to others.

People do remember what street or road they live on and the number of the house, and the name of the town.

The government and others requires a single identifier for each property. The simplest way of maintaining this database of buildings and at the same time making it easy for the end user to specify them precisely is a two part postcode - the published bit - say 4 or 5 digits which points to the natural blob of land (eg market town) where the building is located. The second part (hidden and derived from a database lookup using town, road name and house number). You can use this to give apartment buildings a separate code for each apartment by numbering the apartments by block within a development, and by floor within each building and by apartment unit on that floor. Eg 254 Liffey Towers is apartment number 4 on the 5th floor of block 2 of Liffey Towers development.

At the other end of the coin you have rural addresses, which have been talked about many times. Give each road in a townland a road name - eg BallyTownland Road 1, BallyTownland Road 2 etc. All you need then is the metric premises number on the road and its down - prefixed by a four or five digit postcode to point to the district it is located in.

Even if somebody requiring service did not know their postcode, if they were able to provide the name of the town and street name and house number, any well designed system could perform a perform a postcode lookup and autofill that field. Similarly if one knew the postcode, the town name would be auto-filled and the drop down list of streets (eg as you see making a google search) would only have a few streets matching the first character or two of the road or street name. This would be helpful in ensuring accurate data entry even when the caller was on a bad mobile connection or there were street pronunciation or name spelling difficulties. The database would use the standard spelling and the collection of addresses would be accurate and free of typos.

At the expense of tautology, Ireland should not be re-inventing the wheel here. And I would point out that much of the spade work has been done in the Geodirectory - it is just a matter of refining and updating its database and specifying a district code (ie postcode) for each entity on the Geodirectory.

Notwithstanding that I feel we are all wasting our time because the politicians and permanent government people responsible, as well as the Capita company have their head in the sand and don't want to hear, like a child with his fingers in his ear shouting I can't hear you etc.

The entire operation has been badly defined from the outset, and has not taken into consideration the needs of all stakeholders. It has totally dominated by one stakeholder, at the expense of the country at large.

While this may have been fine in the 10th century, the 21st century has different needs, expectations and requirements. eg online ordering/home delivery, rapid address entry on websites and on computer systems generally, statistical data standardization, emergency services providing an efficient quick response, marketing analysis, retail analysis, anything to do with delivery logistics, and anything to do where somebody visits a premises they are unfamiliar with.

Red Nissan

Impetus wrote: »

The loc8 code is not a postcode or a pointer to each building. It is a compression of the grid references. People don't live or work in grid references, and even if they did most would find great difficulty in remembering them, especially those belonging to others..

Loc8 Code for Páirc Uí Chaimh is WBR-31-Z86

recedite

Loc8 codes are no more difficult than mobile phone numbers to remember. Write them down or make a note of them.
Here's two examples of potentially lifesaving uses of them that eircode can't match.
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/29708-new-water-safety-programme

http://garmin.blogs.com/ukpr/2012/03/loc8-codes-helping-to-save-lives.html#.U-pftKNZjiZ

Here's Fine Gael making use of them to guide delegates to this year's Ard Fheis.
(in a multi-storey building) Why wait for an eircode that may (or may not) eventually be sat nav compatible

Impetus

Red Nissan wrote: »

Loc8 Code for Páirc Uí Chaimh is WBR-31-Z86

So what: A map co-ordinate for the same place is 51.89975 -8.435042. This is an international standard - universally accepted for maps etc.

But you are not going to Mrs Murphy remembering her house's precise co-ordinates at the local Post Office or wherever. And if she does use a GPS to find out her co-ordinates, each time it will be a few decimal points different. And the same issue applies to Loc8. And it is so long, there will invariably be typos involved. Totally unpractical and unrealistic for the purpose of a postcode.

Anyway all the co-ordinates for each building are in the Geodirectory and have been for decades. They don't constitute a postcode, and finding one's way around in Ireland has been and remains a big waste of time, unless one is familiar with the required destination.

ukoda

recedite wrote: »

Loc8 codes are no more difficult than mobile phone numbers to remember. Write them down or make a note of them.
Here's two examples of potentially lifesaving uses of them that eircode can't match.
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/29708-new-water-safety-programme

http://garmin.blogs.com/ukpr/2012/03/loc8-codes-helping-to-save-lives.html#.U-pftKNZjiZ

Here's Fine Gael making use of them to guide delegates to this year's Ard Fheis.
(in a multi-storey building) Why wait for an eircode that may (or may not) eventually be sat nav compatible

pilot was 2 years ago, what was the outcome? obviously not to use loc8 codes and roll them out nationally as it hasn't happened?

In my opinion this is a cumbersome idea prone to all sorts of problems. what the emergency services should focus on is not having to rely on customer input. they should be able to triangulate a callers location from cell tower data and pinpoint them that way

OR

Why not a 999 app with a call button in it that sends the users location to the call centre operator before they call? The AA has this function on its app

Loc8 seem to pride themselves on being "modern" and "technology friendly" but yet the most advanced piece of tech i own (a smart phone) has no idea what a loc8 code is, google maps doesn't know, bing maps doesn't know, apple maps doesn't know, id have to download a special app for it to be any use :rolleyes:

recedite

ukoda wrote: »

can you provide an actual link to this page please? i can't find this on the website you listed above

Sign in to the website etenders.gov.ie and look under the documents (Clarifications)with this RFT:
RFT17007 - JAN194659 - Appointment of a Postcode Management Licence Holder

ukoda wrote: »

Also, this still doesn't show any breach of a guideline? again - the turnover must be proportional - thats ALL the guidelines say.

The breach of EU law is that any Irish indigenous SME's applying through the official channel etenders were specifically told that the individual candidate must have a turnover of €40 Million, not the consortium total turnover.
The EU law says that several SME's are allowed to come together as a consortium to reach the required turnover, even if none of them have that turnover individually.

The breach of the (separate) Irish Govt guidelines you are alluding to, and which I linked to earlier is that the turnover figure should also be proportional/appropriate to the job being tendered for.

In the Dail Public Accounts Committee report on this last month Eamon Molloy (Ass Sec Dept of Comms) told PAC that design of Eircode cost €1.9 million, as invoiced by Capita. Whereas Gary Delaney of Loc8 apparently offered his design for free. Either way, €40 million turnover is excessive for this job.

EU Best partice and Finance Circular 10/10 suggest breaking of contracts into smaller lots to facilitate SME participation (This is how the French keep contracts for French companies).
Loc8 Code would have been ideally suited to compete in a postcode design contract worth €2 million.

As for the implementation costs, these should never have all been included in the one contract. Of the €25 Million that Capita are charging the taxpayer, €8.27M is going in fees to Geodirectory. But this cost is specific to their eircode design; loc8 code does not require access to an external database to work. This is because the code contains the location information within it, and is not simply a random look-up reference number as eircode is.

Another €9.46M (these figures from Dail PAC) for upgrading the databases of various govt. departments. Why don't they do this themselves, or just put out a contract to employ data entry sub-contractors afterwards? Its not relevant for the design.
What we are interested in here is to get a good design which also has minimal maintenance costs.

recedite

Impetus wrote: »

So what: A map co-ordinate for the same place is 51.89975 -8.435042.
.. And it is so long, there will invariably be typos involved.

That is 14 digits, with no checking digit. The Loc8 equivalent is 8 digits, including the checksum which eliminates typos.

recedite

ukoda wrote: »

pilot was 2 years ago, what was the outcome? obviously not to use loc8 codes and roll them out nationally as it hasn't happened?
Why not a 999 app with a call button in it that sends the users location to the call centre operator before they call?

Obviously no code is going to be universally adopted until the government adopts it as the official national code. Even if eircode is rolled out by govt. it looks like Loc8 is going to persist as an unofficial rival because of its greater usefulness to hauliers, the emergency services and others.

The 999 app would be very useful in the event that the person did not know their location, yes. That has nothing to do with this topic though.
A location code would help an ambulance to quickly locate a person phoning from their home on a landline. People would quickly get to know their own code.