Costs, safety and drivers: these are the three key functions that constitute the life of the fleet manager, according to Philip Constable.

Constable joined London Underground maintenance provider Tube Lines three years ago after a 25-year career in transport and distribution. Although it is his first fleet management job, there are key parallels between the two sectors, not least vehicle utilisation.

“It’s been a learning curve, although the differences aren’t massive – it’s still vehicle management and sweating the asset is just as important,” he says.
He’s made a number of sweeping changes that have changed the fortunes of the fleet management operation.

The biggest adjustment was to start running the division, one of five Tube Lines operations (see panel), as a standalone business. “It was being run as an in-house supplier,” Constable says.

His first action was to refurbish the office at the 35-acre site in Acton and change the fleet desk hours to 24/7. It was 8am-4pm but, as Constable says, “vehicles don’t stop then”.
In three years, the fleet management operation has doubled in size and turnover and quadrupled its contribution to the company.

“It’s been driven by customer service and value for money. We changed some suppliers, including contract hire and fuel because we had been seen as an easy touch,” Constable says.

“It wasn’t hard to re-engineer the business; we just looked at the areas where we could do things better.”

One of those areas saw Constable introduce CFC’s Fleet Plus software system – “you have to be electronic in today’s world” - which replaced the old DOS-based system. It’s transformed the operation from simply logging fleet details to measuring and managing the fleet.

“Since we implemented the software we’ve been able to offer customers more savings. We have identified fleet utilisation issues and vehicles that were using too much fuel. And we can provide information to encourage customers into lower CO2 vehicles,” Constable says.

“Certain departments had too many vehicles and we have reduced those numbers.”
Tube Lines spends a lot of time discussing vehicle requirements with customers, in particular looking at usage and budget, but a lot of them don’t know what they want or need.

“Most ring up and say ‘I want a Transit’, but often they don’t need that much capacity,” says Constable.

Questions include whether the vans will run during the day or night – during the day makes them liable for congestion charging, so Tube Lines looks at smaller vehicles and alternative fuel options.

When the right model is chosen, it compares quotes from three contract hire companies to ensure it buys at the right price.

“We are seeing huge variations of more than £100 per month, especially over the past 12 months,” says Constable.

Tube Lines manages 2,000 vehicles of which three-quarters are vans. Vehicles are replaced every three or four years depending on the customer – two-thirds have a four-year cycle.

However, average mileage per vehicle is low at around 10,000 a year because most operations take place in London, which prompted Tube Lines to look at extending lease periods.

It considered five years but decided against change. “It wasn’t financially viable because we get the best deal possible already,” Constable explains.

“The vans are working vans; the engineering is okay but the bodywork takes a pounding. Our number one priority is health and safety – we have a good record and we want to keep it that way by having safe, well maintained vehicles.”

Safety, measured on loss time injury, near misses and incidents, has improved by a factor of 15 on five years ago.

Among the changes made by Constable are regular health and safety bulletins and driver meetings every three months at which he updates them on new initiatives and gets feedback on any equipment concerns.

Drivers are subtly targeted with safety messages. Posters are on display at the fleet hub and they are regularly rotated to keep the attention, while coffee mugs promote the safety first policy.

In addition, the rest rooms on the messing vans have plasma TV screens that play health and safety message from Tube Lines’s library of 75 DVDs.

“Drivers always have the over-confident attitude of ‘you can’t teach me anything’,” says Constable. “But after watching the DVDs, they say ‘that was ok’ and that’s a good response. The might only watch five minutes a day but by the end of the week they will have watched it all and it makes a difference.”

He expects to make further safety improvements after introducing driver profiling, initially with his Tube Lines drivers. It will shortly be rolled out to TfL drivers.

Drivers take an online assessment first and are put into low/medium/high risk categories.
It’s a huge task: with 2,000 vehicles Tube Lines oversees some 10,000 drivers. But it’s a worthwhile one – it will drive down insurance costs.

The company uses its own scheme, called IDS, developed in conjunction with its three contract hire suppliers.

“It will take more than a year, possible two or three years, to put all 10,000 drivers through training,” Constable says. “We have put a couple of drivers through as trainers so it’s all in-house.”

He views the improvements in health and safety as one of is big successes, but also points to the front end fleet management as being a key reason why Tube Lines has grown its business.

“You have to get the right vehicle at the right price in terms of wholelife costs and running costs,” he says. “Then you have to reduce accidents, look at health and safety and consider driver training – that’s the life of a fleet manager.”

Tube Lines: a brief history

Tube Lines was formed on December 31, 2002, merging together five services: fleet management (the biggest division), road haulage, waste management, tool and plant hire, and facilities management.

The fleet management business was originally formed in 1949 as part of London Transport. When the Labour Government began encouraging public-private partnerships, the operation became part of Tube Lines.

Tube Lines was granted a 30-year contract by Transport for London (TfL) to look after the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly underground lines, refurbishing stations, removing waste, updating tracks and looking after running gear.

The company, which is based next to the Piccadilly line on a 35-acre 1920s site in Acton, also has responsibility for London Buses and British Transport police.

Philip Constable views fleet management as providing a service to Tube Lines, which accounts for 20% of its business. “We treat them as our customer, the same as our biggest customer TfL, even though they are a shareholder,” he says.

‘Diesel will dominate until 2014/15’

As a supplier to TfL, Tube Lines trials a lot of electric vehicles, feeding the information back to its biggest customer.

It has used various suppliers and encountered breakdown issues with most vehicles. It now has 10 vans on order from Smith, but Philip Constable has yet to be fully convinced about their suitability.

“Electric will only replace diesel when the costs are similar, refuelling times are 15 minutes not eight hours and they run further – 400 miles rather than the 60-70 miles we are averaging from our vans,” he says.

“Commercially it doesn’t stack up and you lose a shift from an eight-hour recharge. We expect to get close to breakeven by year five.”

He adds: “I believe diesel will be dominant until 2014/15.”

The company also runs more than 100 Honda Civic and Toyota Prius hybrids, and it has a fleet of 15 LPG vans. It looked at CNG but had refuelling issues.

“LPG works but no-one is pushing it forward so there’s no genuine market. At the moment there is no feasible alternative to diesel,” Constable says.

Company Tube Lines

Head of distribution services: Philip Constable
Fleet size: 2,000 (1,500 vans; 500 cars)
Funding method: contract hire
Suppliers: Lex, Grosvenor, Leasedrive Velo
Replacement cycle: three and four years
Average annual mileage: 10,000