As the first such company to make such a move, Metric was mindful of bringing someone on board who had a wealth of experience in this area. And Nelson certainly fits the bill, having worked for NCP for 32 years and for over three years as parking manager of Capital Shopping Centres, based at The Harlequin in Watford.

Nelson was approached by Metric last year. "I always saw tremendous synergies between car park management and car park equipment manufacturers, but the two have never come together," he says. "I've been able to work closely with the development team on the equipment side and aim to come up with a common parking equipment solution that the parking managers will enjoy using. At the same time we can provide a seamless bespoke parking management operation to the client.

"It's about building bridges as well. Unfortunately in the parking industry it's always been that we manufacture the equipment and the operator at the other end welcomes it, but it doesn't give even 90 per cent of what he or she is looking for. More and more operators are being more dictatorial to suppliers about what they want to be supplied with."

Nelson, who joined the team just before Christmas, says that to date the concept has been well received, with one local authority declaring it was 'about time'."

But he and the rest of the Metric team are under no illusions that this new venture will be easy. "Entering into the parking management sector will be a challenge," he says. "As we all know, there are a number of well-named and well-established private parking management operators in the industry. However, we're confident that once we've acquired our first parking management contract, we can demonstrate that we're more than capable of providing a first class management service that can compete with the others."

However, Nelson stresses that Metric is not out to compete against operators that already install its equipment, but rather operators that use other parking metre suppliers.

Having worked both directly for a car park landlord and for one of the UK's major car park operators, Nelson recognises the benefit of employing an operator that is an expert in the parking field.

"I enjoyed my time with CSC and their management processes," he says. "I quickly learnt that car parking is not their core business. Working with a private car park operator allowed me to quickly identify the companies that specialise in, say, shopping centres."

Having managed a shopping centre car park, Nelson knows how to make this asset work. "There are public car parks and public car parks," he says. "There are ones we will park in round the corner to go to work or to jump on the train and there are car parks attached to shopping centres. Those that use car parks in shopping centres are far more critical.

"They think parking should be free, but if you provide a well-lit and well-maintained car park with uniformed personnel, then they don't mind paying for their parking."

Nelson points out that unfortunately car parks are often very unfriendly places. "Shoppers feel more comfortable if they see CCTV in operation, if it's well-lit, the bays are well-marked and staff are present," he says. "It's about providing a service and that's all about the cleaning, the illumination, and so on. A lot of owners are looking to reduce their overheads by removing staff, but that increases crime and you always lose customer confidence."

Design, Nelson believes, is key. "Certainly from my experience at The Harlequin, the biggest issue was when the car park was first designed there was a lack of forethought during the planning stages in terms of the number of vehicles going onto a very busy ring road," he says. "Up until a few years ago the perception was 'don't go anywhere near Watford as it's gridlocked' - but it wasn't. Sometimes you encounter a problem that stays with a shopping centre for a long while.

"CSC, with the local authority, invested a lot of money on the highways, including introducing VMS [variable messaging signs]. The highways engineer monitored the traffic flows using The Harlequin's CCTV and then successfully eliminated the congestion.

"Nowadays you're getting more and more operators working in conjunction with local highway authorities and they're even prepared to invest in the improvement of the infrastructure."

In addition, Nelson says the car park operator needs to carefully price its car park charges, especially now that time trends seem to suggest that shoppers are staying for longer periods. "This can force them into higher than average parking charges that have been introduced to deter long-stay parking," he adds.

Metric is also continually looking at new technology, such as Parking Eye, ANPR and Ringo cashless operation. In the future Nelson believes that all car parks will move towards a cashless system.

"Companies are investing a lot more money in the development of cashless operations," he says. "More companies have ANPR, which in turn allows you to have a cashless operation. By going cashless you're speeding up the process and people can enter and leave the car park quicker. You turn your spaces over faster and that enhances revenue.

"The operator or owner of a car park that doesn't go down this route will find that people will go elsewhere.People who go shopping will think nothing of spending £200 in a shopping centre but won't have 60p in change for a parking fee."

The 'wave and pay' contactless credit card is the latest development in cashless payment options, and Metric has joined forces with card payment specialist Creditcall to produce a system whereby people pay for their parking in bulk and then flash their card across the sensor when entering and leaving the car park so that the fee can be deducted.

The parking meter is a special version of Metric's new Aura machine that accepts payment using the newly issued contactless Visa payWave cards, which were introduced especially for low value transactions where the user needs to pay fast. Wave and pay also offers the lowest cost of implementation due to the simplicity of the card reader.

In addition, Nelson says Metric will be looking at pushing forward the single audit trail solution available through its Aslan back office management system .

"What I'm looking for is to try and have a seamless and single audit trail that the equipment will supply and will satisfy the audit requirements, making audit tracking much easier and reducing the amount of duplication," he says, pointing out that Aslan will put all the day's trading results into a spreadsheet for the car park operator, saving on time and effort.

"People are aware that Aslan exists," he says, "but it comes back to the days where the car park operator comes in and has no say whatsoever in terms of what equipment has been installed."

Nelson also stresses the importance of car park operators working closely with the centre management team. "The centre management's core responsibility is to increase the footfall of the shopping centre," he says, adding that he was based in the management suite while he was at The Harlequin, both when he was based in-house and when the service was later outsourced. "I would probably discuss parking issues with the centre management team two or three times a week because at the end of the day, even when we were outsourced, if there were any criticisms about the car park, whether via the public or the tenants, they would usually go to CSC.

"If I had a problem I would let the general manager or the operations manager know so they were prepared. That's where the partnership is so very important."

Moving forward, Metric is going to build on its current reputation within the industry for providing first class parking equipment, in order to develop its new parking management department.

"We will be striving to mirror the same confidence within the industry towards our new parking management department," says Nelson who, commenting on the challenge ahead, adds: "I'm very excited. The challenge will be hard work but I'm confident that with the Metric team supporting me we can develop and present a successful parking management service."

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