As principal procurement officer at Gentoo Group, fleet is just a small part of Colin Watson’s day-to-day role.

But it didn’t start out that way. When the company was formed in 2001, after Sunderland City Council transferred out its housing stock, Watson had a steep, time-consuming learning curve.

“At the time, the housing stock sat within the public works department of the council, where I was on the procurement team,” he says. “Transferring to the new company, I took on responsibility for vehicles, and discovered that the van fleet was primarily made up of expensive short term hire – my first job was to address that, and acquire contract hire vehicles.”

Today, the business has a number of divisions, including Gentoo Sunderland, a social housing provider, Gentoo Homes, a new home construction firm, and Gentoo Green, an environmental sustainability department.

“My role involves putting the contracts in place with the leasing providers, dealing with manufacturers and agreeing terms, and looking at product, including demo vehicles,” Watson explains.

He is also responsible for drawing up the tenders for each renewal of the commercial vehicle fleet. The fleet is on a three-year contract, with an option to extend for years four and five.

“Our tenders go out through OJEU – the Official Journal of the European Union. Each time we’ve sent a contract out, we’ve got more and more experience,” he says.

“We have the option to go out to various buying consortia, including Crown Commercial Service and Procurement for Housing, but we chose to go to tender independently on our own terms.”

After consulting with a number of manufacturers, Watson was told that he could secure discounts that were just as good as those available on the buying framework.

“They advised us to negotiate our own terms directly,” he says.

Gentoo’s tender document has weightings across a number of criteria, including price, environmental impact, business practices and employment opportunities.

It resulted in a solus deal with Citroën for all commercial vehicles, with a couple of exceptions. Those include the 5.5-tonne Ivecos used in Gentoo’s grounds maintenance division.

Vehicles are tailored to meet the requirements of the respective division usage with feedback sought from drivers.

“We set up a team of tradespeople to trial a range of vehicles within the business,” Watson says.

Billy Lambert, fleet transport co-ordinator, looks after day-to-day operation of the 350-strong commercial vehicle fleet, and managed the trial.

He says: “We ran extensive trials, up to six weeks long, with vehicles in for a week or more. It was important for us to get feedback from across the range of trades on each particular vehicle.”

A number of vehicles were downsized as a result of the new contract and review process, with input from operations managers across the business.

Watson explains: “Previously, we never really questioned it. If a driver was in a Transit, it was replaced with an equivalent.

“Now, if a driver is in a Relay, we ask if a Dispatch would be suitable. It gives us better CO2, better fuel economy and a saving in leasing costs.”

Lambert adds: “We tried to unify vehicles across a trade, so they were consistent, and then looked at the stock they were actually carrying within the vehicles, with a view to reducing weight. Tradespeople are notorious for hoarding stock, so we also saved money putting unused stock back into the stores network. The benefits were twofold.”

Watson says feedback to the change has been generally positive.

Around 80 of the 350 vans on fleet were downsized, from Relays to Dispatches, and from Dispatches to Berlingos.

In addition to efficiency improvements, changes have also been made to improve the safety of the fleet.

“We improved our racking systems, to reduce weight. A lot more vehicles are now fitted with tail lifts, ladder racking and reversing sensors, as we identified a number of avoidable reversing incidents over the last four or five years,” Lambert says.

Gentoo has used telematics and tracking for a number of years, historically to secure and locate assets.

“Once we saw the type of information we could get, we realised we could share that with our operations managers to great effect,” Watson says.

Lambert adds: “We don’t hang on to the telematics data in a central ‘power unit’. It gets shared with our operations managers across the trades, too.

“We got all the managers trained up to use the ‘safety analysis’ data in the dashboard.  The manager sits down with their staff on a monthly basis and reviews the data.

“The iPad app for the telematics is excellent, and it makes it really easy for the managers to engage with the data.”

Gentoo is looking to introduce a driver of the year competition, making use of the telematics data to reward good drivers.

“We want to put a positive spin on things, to reward the top drivers – not name and shame,” says Watson, who hopes to integrate the award into Gentoo’s existing recognition event.

The company runs a driver training programme for all commercial vehicle drivers, with each driver taking part in the course at least once every three years.

It also uses the safety analysis data from telematics, along with accident records, to identify if anyone needs additional training.

In addition, Gentoo is in the process of producing a classroom-based training session to accompany its driver handbook.

The session will incorporate video clips with voting-style remote control handsets on which drivers will select an answer from a multiple choice list.

“We’re also opening the session up to anyone within the company, particularly grey fleet and pool car drivers,” says Watson.

Gentoo’s 100 company cars are a mix of perk and job need, but all are selected on a user-chooser basis.

“Each car is priced individually against a panel of three leasing companies. We have a 130g/km CO2 cap, and we want to reduce this, in co-operation with our green team, by 5g/km per year,” says Watson.

“We’re keeping a close eye on the bandings, though, as we don’t necessarily want to push staff into a diesel car if they are doing a low number of miles.”

Responsibility for grey fleet does not sit with either procurement or HR – instead, it is placed within finance and payroll. Gentoo has 365 grey fleet drivers and has been looking at ways to reduce mileage.

One solution was to introduce a fleet  of pool cars.

Following consultation with Energy Saving Trust, Gentoo opted for seven electric Nissan Leafs and six petrol Citroën C1s.

The move fits with a ‘planet smart’ programme being led by Gentoo Green, its sustainability division, which is being rolled out across the company.

“We’d spoken to Energy Saving Trust, and looked at the profile of our grey fleet vehicles. Some vehicles were 12 or 13 years old, and we recognized there could be potential service and MOT issues,” says Watson.

The electric cars have had a mixed reception from drivers, according to Joanna Coates, planet smart advisor.

“Some drivers love them; they can’t wait to go out in them and use them at every opportunity they can. Others are a bit more cautious,” she says.

“We have provided driving lessons in the Leafs, to tell staff how to use them, how it only takes a couple of minutes to plug in. From there, the staff have taken it upon themselves to show colleagues how to use the cars, which is brilliant.

“We are definitely seeing a reduction in our grey fleet mileage as more staff take to the pool cars,” she says.

“We do encourage staff to use the Leafs, but even if they use the petrol vehicles the savings are still greater for us than equivalent grey fleet miles.

“We’re trying to find ways to incentivise and encourage staff to use the pool cars more. We’ve worked really hard to engage with staff, and give them a viable alternative to just hopping in their own car.

“There’s a long way to go to get all staff using them, but we’re definitely on the right track.”

Gentoo is focusing on high mileage grey fleet drivers, working with them to encourage them into pool cars.

The company’s green travel ambitions aren’t simply limited to business miles.

It has placed an additional Nissan Leaf – manufactured just three miles away from the company’s HQ – in the community where it is loaned to charities and local ambassadors for use from a week to a month.

The company also has a fleet of three electric bicycles in use across managed housing estates to allow staff to get between local sites more quickly than walking and more efficiently than driving.

“The staff think they’re great. Instead of using their own car, they just hop on a bike”, says Coates.

Staff are also encouraged to consider their own personal transport to and from work.

“As a lot of staff drive to work, and our head office doesn’t have enough spaces for all employees, we have run a series of  postcode parties,” says Coates.

“These parties are to try and get staff to consider car sharing to and from work, and match employees to others who live nearby.

“We’re looking to run the scheme again and encourage staff to consider their use of the pool cars – get them asking if they can share journeys with colleagues, by picking or dropping others off along the way.”

As a large part of Gentoo’s work is in  the communities, where its social housing  is located, an element of its procurement criteria includes corporate social responsibility. This means using local suppliers on unusual contract terms.

The group’s Citroën commercial vehicles are supplied and maintained by local dealer Springfield.

“Part of the contract includes looking at employment opportunities for residents within our communities,” explains Coates.

“Two tenants have been employed by Springfield across their sites as a direct result of our fleet contract with them.

“If they have any vacancies to fill, they’ll often come to us.”

The partnership with Springfield became particularly useful for Gentoo when the vehicle replacement programme got  under way. Approximately six vehicles were handed back to drivers each day, spread over a 10-week period.

“The majority of our vehicles are kept at homes overnight, so we didn’t have a depot large enough to facilitate the full handover process,” says Lambert.

“Trackers would need to be removed from old vehicles, and additional equipment added, so Springfield allowed that to happen at their sites.”

As part of the most recent tender for  cars, Watson included the option to launch a salary sacrifice programme for the company’s 1,700 staff, something he hopes to do shortly.

“We’ll apply the same CO2 cap criteria to the scheme as we do for our company cars, and we’re expecting to begin offering it in the next few months,” says Watson.

“Based on the take up that we’ve read about in Fleet News, we’re expecting it to  add around 30 to 40 additional vehicles to the fleet.”