How do you know your fleet is well managed? Is your perception based on an absence of complaints or is it about hitting defined performance and budget targets?

All of these are important, but one of the best ways is to assess your fleet against best practice is to benchmark.

The IPWEA Third Party Fleet Management Health Check is a convenient and cost-effective way to get a check up on the current state of your arrangements compared to best practice (as defined in the Plant and Vehicle Management Manual and ISO55000 for asset management). Not only does a health check tell you where you currently stand, it identifies where you can improve. This process of review, identifying opportunities for improvement and implementing improvement is fundamental to proactive management.

Another great way to understand how you’re travelling is to compare your fleet management arrangements with other fleets. Even at an informal level this can raise questions for consideration, provide confidence relating to what you’re doing well and demonstrate what you might do better. This kind of informal benchmarking can take place with similar organisations, with organisations in different industries or even within your organisation across branches. The lessons can be powerful.

In the US there is the 100 Best Fleets program. This program recognises and rewards peak-performing fleet operations in the Americas. Currently in its twentieth year, The 100 Best Fleets identifies and encourages ever-increasing levels of performance improvement and innovation within the public fleet industry. It does this by:

• Identifying outstanding operations for others to emulate
• Promoting pride in the industry
• Providing recognition
• Promoting ever-increasing levels of productivity and operational effectiveness
• Encouraging more individuals to consider fleet operations as a career choice

The identification and sharing of best practice is an area of great interest to IPWEA, so we are delighted to have Tom Johnson, the 100 Best Fleets program founder and author of the book The 100 Best Fleets as a keynote speaker at the IPWEA Australasian Fleet Conference 25–27 March, 2019 in Brisbane. Tom will deliver a keynote presentation and be involved in a number of panel discussions across the conference.

Register now.