by Ken Goldberg – Consultant, IPWEA FLEET

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to create an extremely challenging environment for fleet practitioners. Rules, regulations and operations change on a daily, if not hourly basis. This situation is forcing fleet managers to seek innovative solutions to deal with the momentous and accelerated change.

 To help share information amongst our community, IPWEA FLEET held an online webinar on Thursday, April 16, to hear four fleet practitioners speak about how they are dealing with the coronavirus crisis. The speakers included Thomas Brayley (Logan City Council), Scott Owen (Brisbane City Council), Andrew Douglas (Home@Scope) and David Timms (Richmond Valley Council). There was a great deal of interest with 33 fleet practitioners across Australia attending the session to get a firsthand view into the speaker’s experiences and ask questions. 

 Some of the key discussion points included:

• The most vital competency is good leadership
• Take a birds-eye view and be judicious in responding
• Communication is a must to manage staff anxiety levels
• Develop a COVID-19 budget as cost savings is everything
• Shut down non-essential items, e.g. reception, vending machines, etc.
• Deep clean then apply a daily cleaning regime which can possibly be automated
• Balance increased stock levels of parts and supplies e.g. tyres (due to possible shortages) with limited space
• Assess needs for pool vehicles then reduce accordingly to limit contamination and provide more operational vehicles
• Consider FTEs and stand-down contract staff first
• Telecommuting is a positive outcome and does work
• The crisis has allowed an accelerated improvement of processes and increased efficiencies

 We also received calls from fleet practitioners after the webinar and were given some great feedback. Key points included:

• Regional centres many times need to do things differently than city centres
• Future dialogue could be focused on possible long-term wins – not just the crisis

With regards to the ‘regional versus city’ reaction received following the webinar, some additional points were raised about the regions that were quite interesting, including:

• The logistics of social distancing by multiple maintenance staff with the use of minimal workshop bays (in some cases only 1) was problematic.
• Innovative safety measures have been deployed installing thick see-through screens in vehicles to allow more people inside.
• There was a need to develop grey fleet procedures (whereas larger organisations may have already had these schemes in place).
• A need to implement paperless pre-starts, job cards and timesheets that had never been an issue previously within the regions.
• Further elimination of paper handling by staff using individual tablets to reduce potential virus spread.
• Deployment of steam cleaners, sanitising spray (e.g. for only 1 or 2 pits), etc. because automated cleaning systems were not an option for many regional centres.

Overall, the webinar sparked an important conversation on how to deal with challenges now and into the future, actions being taken, priorities being addressed, and how to maintain best practice. The high-level discussion was a great start and IPWEA FLEET is determined to support the fleet community through this crisis and beyond.

With regards to fleet community support, IPWEA FLEET will continue to offer Online Fleet Management Training which will be starting in May. In addition, we will be running a fleet management webinar series starting in June to assist with fleet practitioner’s professional development.

Finally, we have provided some links to resources that may be useful during this period:

• FREE access to all “This Way Up" courses during the COVID-19 crisis to help with well-being - click on link
• Fleet Health Checks - click on link
• Maintenance Planning - click on link
• Whole of Life Costing:
• WOL Costing Tool - click on link
• Professional Services - IPWEA FLEET can provide WOL Costing analysis, best value comparison and hire rate calculations (email robert.wilson@ipwea.org for more information)
• Plant & Vehicle Management Manual Ed.4 - click on link

If you have any further questions or feedback on any of the webinar's discussion points or IPWEA FLEET programs, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.   All the best and stay safe.