Improvements seen in fleet operations
By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express
After more than a year’s worth of effort, the City of Oshawa is starting to steer its fleet department in a more productive and cost-friendly direction, at least according to a second audit of the department recently completed by KPMG.
The previous audit, completed in 2017, revealed some troubling holes in the city’s fleet purchasing and management practices that could have been costing the city money, and also saw staff ignoring reports and looking for council approval on items they may not have necessarily needed.
Overall, the initial audit found that the city was lacking the proper infrastructure for running a cost-effective system. Specifically, the audit found that the city rarely analyzed assets on a regular basis and that when certain assets were being analyzed, only a three-year mileage and repair estimate was noted, which does not give a full idea of the replacement costs required to give a better idea of when certain vehicles need replacement or the type of replacement needed.
The city’s Fleet Services department is responsible for managing more than 300 city vehicles worth approximately $23.8 million. Currently, the city contracts NAPA for most of the fleet’s spare parts inventory.
This time around, things appeared a lot different inside the department.
In the initial audit, eight recommendations were made, five of which are now complete and two more are currently being implemented, as only one saw no progress.
In particular, representatives from KPMG noted the city’s hiring of a fleet analyst was paying dividends in terms of improved resourcing and reviewing, and was providing a more fulsome picture of NAPA’s ability to meet the city’s need for car parts on a timely basis.
The contract with NAPA and the auto part giant’s ability to meet contractual obligations with the city were under the microscope previously. However, for Mayor John Henry, the NAPA contract is a valuable resource.
“There is a huge time savings here,” he says. “That’s not been measured…but there’s also a number of efficiencies that came forward.”
“The efficiencies on that side have been outstanding and we’ve certainly been more productive that way,” says Mike Saulnier, the city’s director of operations services.
Henry also credits the city’s Consolidated Operations Depot as playing a large role in the improvements in terms of efficiency.
“The depot is probably one of the most controversial issues in the city…The quantified savings that aren’t shown in this report need to be told as well,” he says. “I know that when you gain back 10 hours a day by your mechanics….the savings that are there may not be monetary in one aspect, but in performance.”
In terms of KPMG’s findings, the city saw improvement in the recording of fleet data for reporting and analysis purposes, again thanks to the hiring of a fleet analyst.
With that said, the auditors did note a few remaining areas for improvement. In particular, they discovered that mileage is not being analyzed across all vehicle types, a problem that has led to some vehicles being under-utilized, which can cost the city money in terms of maintaining and keeping vehicles they may no longer need.
Also, similar to the initial audit, the city was not consistently monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) required in NAPA’s contract.