“In the past it was ‘this is an army vehicle’ or ‘this is a navy vehicle’, whereas now we are saying ‘this is an MOD vehicle’,” says Spiller.
The aim is for virtually the whole fleet to become a pool of vehicles that anyone in the MOD can use.
“There will be some vehicles that are required day in, day out that won’t be available for other people to use but general administrative vehicles can cross anywhere in the business,” Jones says.
To achieve this, the MOD and Babcock have developed a vehicle allocation system (Phoenix Booking System or PBS2) which is being used in conjunction with Trimble’s telematics system.
The MOD has dabbled with telematics in the past, trialling GreenRoad’s driver behaviour system, but the decision to roll telematics out to the fleet is based on utilisation.
Spiller says the issue the MOD had in the past was that it only had manual data capture cards.
“We didn’t have accurate utilisation data,” he says.
“Now it’s irrefutable because it’s electronic.”
The majority of ‘administrative’ journeys now have to be authorised through the Phoenix Booking System.
Employees are expected to first consider whether they need to travel to a meeting or whether a telephone conference can be held instead.
If they do need to travel, the system looks at which MOD vehicles are available and offers the driver a choice.
If no vehicles are available it will book a rental vehicle.
The MOD makes around 250,000 hire bookings a year so significant savings could be made from better utilising its vehicles.
Spiller suggests the potential savings will far outweigh the cost of telematics and the Phoenix Booking System. Long-term he wants the system to allow people to car share to meetings.
“We’re a way away from that yet but that’s where we want to be heading,” he says.
Babcock has a team of analysts looking at the telematics data with a view to recommending the right mix of lease vehicles and rental for each MOD unit.
However, telematics has only been rolled out in the past few months and there is still a lot more work required.
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Sarah Tooze is a former managing editor of sister title Smart Transport. Prior to joining Smart Transport she worked on Fleet News for more than 10 years, latterly as deputy editor, and won the ‘automotive business journalist’ award in the 2017 Newspress Awards.
Simon Clarke - 08/03/2013 14:55
in my professional opinion this saving is not only unrealistic but also unreachable. any fleet management company worth its salt would need to be robust and say up front a massive number of fleet vehicles would need to go.