Keep on Truckin’: The City of Raleigh Public Utilities’ Roadmap to Effective Fleet Management

Strategic plans often fail or sit on a shelf unused because organizations tend to go through the motions of developing the plan simply because common sense says “every good organization must have a strategic plan.” Or, they fail because the organization doesn’t appropriately focus on results, has only partial commitment of staff, doesn’t have the right people involved in the plan’s creation, or has difficulty accepting the change that often results when a strategic plan is properly implemented.The City of Raleigh’s Public Utilities Department (CORPUD) is determined to not let its current Strategic Plan, completed in 2012, fail for these reasons. In fact, Raleigh has developed accountability in its plan by assigning Goal Teams/Champions to each of its primary Goals, deadlines and owners for each prioritized Action Item, and performance metrics to measure progress and overall results.This paper presents one aspect of CORPUD’s efforts to implement its Strategic Plan by taking preemptive measures to remain an efficient utility at the lowest cost to its expanding customer base. As part of its Environmental Stewardship Goal within its Strategic Plan, CORPUD identified actions to evaluate its fleet usage for efficiency improvements. This paper presents those actions undertaken by CORPUD to develop a roadmap for ongoing improvements to vehicle and fleet management practices to ensure optimized costs and performance while meeting operational needs and achieving environmental sustainability goals.As a significant internal business cost, fleet and vehicle operations and maintenance any organization should operate in the most effective manner. At the same time, an adequate and well-maintained fleet is essential for supporting mission-critical construction, operations, and maintenance activities. Through a comprehensive evaluation and benchmarking study of its current fleet management practices, policies, and procedures, CORPUD developed a prioritized roadmap of improvement initiatives; some focused on cost reduction and others focused on required investments, performance improvement, and environmental stewardship.This paper will discuss the improvement initiatives that CORPUD has already completed to reduce its overall fleet management costs, to increase staff productivity, and to minimize the fleet’s impact on the environment. As many of CORPUD’s fleet management activities are currently performed centrally by the City of Raleigh through Vehicle Fleet Services (VFS), while others are completed internally by CORPUD staff, many of the improvement initiatives require implementation collaboratively between both organizations. These improvement initiatives include:• Fleet Administration– CORPUD has implemented a new Fleet Motor Pool Policy and established Take-Home Vehicle categories to ensure the proper use of fleet equipment. Inasset management. It is also in the process of implementing a new Fleet Manager position within CORPUD and installing GPS and an Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) solution in its vehicles.• Vehicle Acquisition and Disposal– CORPUD has begun purchasing crew vehicles and trailers that can be used across the Department and removing, replacing, or placing where other business needs can be met any vehicles that are deemed non-essential.• Sustainability and Environmental Compliance– CORPUD has reduced its fleet inventory in some divisions, is utilizing pool vehicles at its locations, and has increased the use and purchase of passenger and alternative fuel vehicles.• Vehicle Maintenance– CORPUD is currently implementing a pilot unified delivery service model with VFS for the provision of preventative and corrective maintenance at three CORPUD locations.