X

New York City, under the leadership of Mayor Bill de Blasio, launched the Vision Zero Action Plan to combat traffic-related deaths. In 2013, the year before de Blasio was elected mayor, there were 183 pedestrians killed in traffic crashes, the highest number since 2003. The City Fleet, which covers over 29,000 vehicles, needed a highly accurate way to track collision metrics. The metrics tracked include citywide collisions by fleet agency, collisions with injuries, pedestrian injuries, fatalities, collisions by geographic location, and collisions with both moving and non-moving objects. Other important fleet pieces tracked are internal, such as whether or not employees have completed defensive driving courses, state inspections, completed and overdue preventive maintenance, fleet roster and the installation of truck sideguards.

Chuck Wolverton, the Fleet/Fuel Systems Administrator for the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT), is responsible for ensuring the data entry for their fleet and fuel systems is accurate and up to date. He oversees the use of AssetWorks FleetFocus and FuelFocus software, which help monitor preventive maintenance, vehicle mileage, fuel usage and more. However, the job is intensive and data-entry oriented, and many people underestimate the amount of work that goes into operating and maintaining a fleet/fuel system. The challenge is to keep the entire process running smoothly and efficiently, while also reporting KPIs through easy-to-use Dashboards.

The East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) operated two motor pool lots without an automated system in place. One motor pool used a physical punch clock, while the other used an online form for checking out a pool vehicle. Because this process was manual, pool vehicles could only be reserved in four or eight hour intervals, even if the vehicle was only needed for a shorter period of time. This resulted in inefficiency and labor intensiveness.

In 2016, Scott County, Minnesota faced a significant problem with their Preventive Maintenance Compliance (PMC) reporting for all equipment in the County, which was very low. The two departments that were significantly lower in PMC and were skewing the numbers downward were the Highway Maintenance and the Sheriff’s Departments, averaging about 15%-20% on time compliance. The Sheriff’s Department had unique assets to track, including 25 squad sheriff cars, 5-6 of which run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Each vehicle racks up approximately 200-350 miles a day. The first challenge was that their equipment class for preventive maintenance (PM) purposes was due at the 400 mile mark. Due to the vehicles’ high daily mileage, they realized that even a day and a half without stopping in the shop could leave that vehicle out of compliance already. The second challenge was a communication gap between the Sheriff’s Department and its maintenance shops. As PM would come due, the shop technician or parts manager would send an email notice to the driver of the vehicle, essentially saying, “Let’s get the PM scheduled.” As one can imagine, drivers in the Sheriff’s Department are very busy with cases, off-hour shifts and other procedural work, which sometimes led to delayed responses to the PM emails. Based on their established PMC mark, these vehicles would end up violating the PMC during the gaps in communication.

The federal organization had the challenging task of tracking 36,000 unique assets across multiple locations in North America. They were using a legacy asset management system that did not provide the advanced tracking and security they required. The technology infrastructure supporting this system was also beginning to degrade. They needed advanced tracking both related to and not related to work orders, enhanced reporting features for audits, and customizable security clearances.

Mary Joyce Ivers, the Fleet and Facilities Manager for the City of Ventura, California, oversees 327 on-road vehicles, 67 off-road vehicles and one maintenance facility. The City has a $2.9 million operating budget. The challenge lies in managing fleet costs, scheduling, accountability, labor, historical data, safety recordkeeping and reporting in order to be accountable to both customers and the organization at large. The fleet impacts every department and supports all departments’ delivery of services to the community, making it crucial to maintain efficiency and effectiveness.

Mitch Guenthart, the Fleet Manager for the County of Santa Barbara, California, has been in the fleet industry for 38 years. He is responsible for managing a wide range of complex tasks, including budgeting, complex accounting, accident subrogation, civil service, organizing staff training, and giving presentations. Guenthart receives between 20 and 50 new emails and between 10 and 30 phone calls per day, which he must respond to promptly. He also spends a significant portion of his time managing the business aspects of the fleet, relying on his staff, assistant managers, and shop supervisors to run the more technical aspects of fleet operations.

Shawn Smithson, the Section Manager for Fleet Information & Fuel Systems for the City of Ottawa, is responsible for managing fleet technology and supporting the mechanics, stores personnel, admin staff, and city employees who use the city's 23 fuel sites. His role involves researching new technology and initiatives that could benefit the fleet. The City of Ottawa uses both FleetFocus and FuelFocus, and Smithson spends a significant portion of his day in the software, finding new ways to optimize it for their fleet. During the city’s implementation and upgrade to newer, more secure versions of the software, Smithson and his team were pushed to create manuals, policies, and procedures that would be effective tools for explaining the city’s unique utilization of the highly customizable software.

Sarah Sabastro, the Senior Fleet Systems Administrator for Exelon B G & E, has a challenging role that involves solving software issues within the fleet management system to optimize the fleet's workflows. Her interaction with AssetWorks software is vital to her role, as she spends about 5 hours a day analyzing quality trends, meantime to service, and forecasting. Sarah's role is critical to the successful utilization of FleetFocus. She starts her day by checking the inbox for all eight of their fleet shops to check for out of service notices. Once she has gathered the necessary information, she meets up with the shop manager to do clean-up on the out of service notices that she received.

Joel Klein, a Senior Information Systems Analyst for the Fleet Services Division of Sacramento County, CA, is responsible for troubleshooting any issues that other users at the County may have with their fleet management software. He also optimizes and configures the software’s treatment of parts and time to effectively auto populate work orders. Additionally, Klein spends a significant amount of his time building customized reports for upper management to use in decision-making with regards to the fleet. The challenge lies in ensuring that the fleet management system is active and ready for each day’s work, and that it is working effectively for all users. This includes the Lead of Light Fleet Operations, the Heavy Fleet Supervisor, and the Parts team.

The Office of Risk Management at the University of Central Florida (UCF) is tasked with the protection of all human and physical assets within the university. This includes over 300 buildings and 250 golf carts, with a total insurable value of nearly $1.4 billion. The university also has to track all capitalized assets within each building. The challenge was to maintain integral data on buildings, complete risk assessments, and develop risk mitigation strategies.

San Diego County, spanning 4,260 square miles with a population of approximately three million, provides a significant number of regional services to local taxpayers. The County's fleet management division supports over 3,800 vehicles and provides similar services for other government agencies. However, in the '90s, the County faced the challenge of merging two separate fleet operations and migrating from a mainframe application to a client-server. They were also challenged to be competitive when compared to the private sector. These unique challenges led the County to seek bids for a new fleet management information system that could address all issues. The County also faced the threat of privatization and was selected to participate in the County of San Diego’s first managed competition program.

The City of Portland’s CityFleet department is comprised of six shops and six fuel stations with a budget of $35.8 million. CityFleet is operated by 76 employees that manage the acquisition, repair, maintenance, parts, and fueling of a diverse fleet comprised of 2,850 vehicles and pieces of equipment valued at over $110 million. The fleet serves all of the bureaus in Portland and in order to keep up with demand, CityFleet estimates that nearly $300K worth of maintenance parts sits on the shelves at any given moment. CityFleet processes over 23,000 work orders a year and the process of filling in missing data and closing them was labor intensive.

The City of Chesapeake’s Central Fleet Management (CFM) division, led by Fleet Manager George Hrichak, oversees some 1800 vehicles with an annual operating budget of $9.5 million. The CFM is guided in their work by the division’s mission statement: To provide efficient and cost-effective fleet management services for a safe, economical, and environmentally sound fleet that meets the needs of our customers and which protects the investment of our citizens. In 2002 the City of Chesapeake sought to modernize the technology used by the CFM and seek greater efficiency by moving from an outdated mainframe system to AssetWork’s fully web-enabled fleet management solution; FleetFocus. The transition to FleetFocus provided the City with the robust maintenance and reporting capabilities needed to maintain the fleet’s light and heavy duty vehicles, stationary assets, tools and even the city’s boats.