During October and November 2022, IPWEA Fleet ran their annual Plant and Vehicle Management Workshops in Dubbo, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. There were presentations from IPWEA Fleet Subscribers sharing the projects they are working on, with updates from the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) and other government agencies.
Each workshop had local presenters with safety, telematics and electric vehicles being common themes. On the east coast, electric vehicles were the hot topic and many fleets are getting ready with infrastructure planning and fleet reviews. In Adelaide and Perth, most fleets are already using telematics on all asset types while planning for EVs is not as advanced. Safety was the one area that needed some focus within all organisations.
Marc Sibbald, Director – IPWEA Fleet, said “It was great to get everyone together after so many years apart. We started in Dubbo not long after the first wave of floods hit regional NSW though that didn’t stop people from joining us.”
The location in Brisbane was the Komatsu Innovation Hub so attendees got to take a factory tour during lunch to see the massive mining trucks that are assembled onsite. While in Sydney, there were some distractions from the supercar track day at Sydney Motorsport Park.
In Melbourne, Mitchell Shire Council was the host with Elly Parker and her team organising the Beveridge Community Centre which was a great venue. In 2023 we’ll head to Geelong with Ryan and Joe volunteering to host the next workshop.
Cindy McDougall, Fleet Coordinator at The City of Tea Tree Gully, rallied the local Adelaide fleet community, and in Perth there were lots of new and familiar faces which was fantastic.
The workshops started in October during National Safe Work Month. Jessie Thomas from Transport for NSW presented in Dubbo and Sydney on the Towards Zero program which is targeted at workplace road safety. She shared some research on workplace deaths related to vehicles and outlined the numerous resources that are available to help increase awareness within organisations. Click here to check them out.
Chain of Responsibility (CoR) appears to have lost some momentum during the COVID years and Anne-Maree Coyne from Modus Management presented a great case study after contacting Fleet Managers in QLD, NSW and SA to get a CoR status update. She found that only 40% of fleets have a high level of CoR implementation.
There were five main themes in the case study:
- CoR compliance needs to be reinvigorated.
- Senior Executives and Managers needs to understand CoR and support it.
- Dedicated CoR resources make a big difference to compliance levels.
- Monitoring and verification needs to be regular as an important part of the CoR legislation.
- There are common challenges and obstacles across all organisations which are easy to overcome.
In Brisbane, Matthew Weatherby from the NHVR presented on Safety Management Systems while in Adelaide and Melbourne, Paul Simionato talked about CoR compliance and areas the NHVR are targeting. He said the compliance rate in Victoria was approximately 40% though he acknowledged that 90% of the industry is doing the right thing. The NHVR collects a lot of market intelligence so they focus their efforts on the high risk operators. Garbage trucks are on the radar because of the ‘first to finish’ policies that encourage unsafe driving behaviour which is a risk for most local government fleets.
The NHVR has a tonne of resources to help organisations implement and manage their CoR responsibilities. Click here to find out more, or contact IPWEA Fleet for more help.
Environmental targets are driving the transition to electric vehicles so there were several presentations on EVs during the workshops. In Dubbo, John Barlow from the NSW Department of Planning and Environment shared how they had implemented a pool car fleet of 30 EVs based in regional NSW.
In Sydney, Emily Carson from Northern Beaches Council shared their EV strategy and talked about their policy for EV home charging and how staff will be encouraged to take an electric vehicle over an ICE alternative.
Joe Murphy from The City of Greater Geelong stunned the crowd at the Melbourne workshop when he announced they were ordering 30 electric vehicles in 2022 and explained how they were working on charging infrastructure as part of an advanced plan for a transition to zero emissions vehicles.
The State Governments were represented in Sydney, Adelaide and Perth to share their programs designed to encourage more fleets to adopt electric vehicles. It highlighted how the different approaches would present a challenge to a national fleet.
A highlight in WA was the presentation by Mark Williams, Acting Coordinator Asset Fleet and Sustainability at City of Subiaco, where he shared the stage with his colleague Hannah to explain how the council had become carbon neutral since buying their first EV in 2013.
The agenda at each location contained local case studies, updates from government agencies and key learning outcomes for the attendees which combined with the benefits of networking, delivered great value to the organisations represented.
The dates for the 2023 Plant and Vehicle Management workshops will be on the IPWEA Fleet website early in the new year.
