– By Caroline Falls –
Have you ever been to a conference and almost fallen asleep listening to speaker after speaker? I have, but not at IPWEA’s inaugural fleet conference in Brisbane last week. It was lively from the get go, with great speakers, trade exhibitors in the main room, lots of questions and audience participation and a lot of takeaways to mull over.
The event was deemed so successful by the Institute of Public Works Engineers Australasia that its CEO Rob Fuller announced it will hold a second conference in Sydney about the same time next year (so make a note in your calendar now to ensure you can be part of that, whether as a delegate or as an exhibitor).
It’s hard to know where to begin with such a brilliant event. So I’m going to start at the beginning, which was a warm welcome to the 130 plus delegates and many other exhibitors by Fuller followed by consultant Simon Ginn’s electric presentation on the fascinating topic of how autonomous vehicles are changing all of our lives.
Ginn has thought deeply about how this technology is going to revolutionise fleets, families and cities. We won’t be building more motorways in the future, said Ginn, because we won’t need them as driverless cars can bunch up closer eliminating present capacity and congestion issues of roads. We may not even need traffic lights as cars can move and merge without them!
Thanks to a late afternoon start it was already cocktail time and the audience moved outside into a special laneway of the Mercure Hotel for drinks and canapes sponsored by software provider PoolCar.
The place was absolutely abuzz, with Ginn’s rapid-fire presentation triggering so many ideas people who didn’t know each other had something engaging and fantastic to talk about, while others took the opportunity to catch up with former colleagues and business contacts. Meanwhile, PoolCar surveyed some participants donating $10 for each one completed to The Fred Hollows Foundation, and raising a total of $310.
The next day started with an AusFleet sponsored breakfast in the exhibitor area of the main room, a welcome from the Gold Sponsor Nissan and a fun, but serious, presentation on chain of responsibility legislation that places heavy obligations on fleet managers.
It was fun because it was presented as a moot court with Latus CEO Mike Wood wearing a judge-style wig to hear about a fantasy local council’s troubles and excuses involved with a slipshod sub-contractor. I don’t want to single anyone out, but if Cindy McDougall wasn’t fleet coordinator at SA’s Tea Tree Gully City Council, she could be a TV star. Her pleas had the audience in uproarious laughter.
I’m running out of room to give you even a tiny detail about each presentation, but if you weren’t there you missed some good stuff. Even if you were there you missed out because you had to choose between concurrent afternoon sessions. I missed out on grey fleet and management information presentations in favour of presentations about the future of diesel fuel. Australia should look to Europe in particular to see what’s happening as major cities there clamp down on diesel emissions.
The highlight of the conference was the presentation by international drawcard Tim Fitzgerald, the fleet director of Washington’s DC Water and Sewerage.
Fitzgerald introduced a data management system to DC Water seven years ago and it’s been so successful the utility is now being paid and engaged to consult to others. I interviewed Fitzgerald on the side of the conference and will bring that to you later, but here was a key takeaway from him on the subject of data management: “It makes the biggest difference in the world.”
The conference sessions ended with a panel discussion: “The Road Ahead”. Fitzgerald was joined here by IPWEA Fleet chair Steve Colliver and this publication’s editor Marc Sibbald. It was a theme that bubbled up over the three days of the event. I’m going to leave you with some of the thoughts along those lines:
Rob Fuller, IPWEA CEO: “I suspect fleet managers will be replaced by mobility managers.” He was talking about shifts to managing point-to-point transport and pool cars rather than focusing on managing and maintaining vehicles.
Tim Fitzgerald: “Fleet is becoming a senior executive service role; it’s becoming more prominent. In the old days we were the last to get money and the first to get cut, now my voice goes directly to the CEO, but it does not happen without us tooting our horn.”
Then everyone got on the bus to go on a VIP tour of the Brisbane Truck Show, which IPWEA Fleet had partnered with. The bus was so noisy, with everyone talking, I was reminded of travel in Italy.
And the truck show? It was almost overwhelming with hundreds of exhibitors, new trucks being unveiled, engines unveiled … no wonder it’s a drawcard for some 40,000 visitors each year. I have a nice photo story of some of the featured trucks from that event to be published in coming editions of Fleet Auto News.
