The Association of Equipment Management Professionals (AEMP) and Construction Equipment presented the 2019 Fleet Master Awards in a celebration on March 20, 2019, recognizing organizations that excel in cost-effective management of mixed fleets of on- and off-road mobile equipment.
Frank Raczon, Senior Editor of Construction Equipment, now in its 70th year, presented the awards during AEMP’s 37th Annual Conference and Annual Meeting, held in Orlando, Florida, March 19-21, 2019.
“We have been honored to partner with AEMP over the past 15 years in recognizing excellence in equipment management,” Raczon said. “It’s a prestigious national award, designed to bring attention and recognition to all equipment professionals and their teams.
The Fleet Master Award for Large Fleets (fleet replacement value greater than $100M) was presented to Sarasota County Fleet Services. (Sarasota was also named Fleet Master in 2014.) With approximately 1,700 assets both on and off road that are serviced across three maintenance facilities and four fueling sites, Sarasota County Fleet Services implemented a new safety training program. Weekly in-depth safety inspections are conducted and then rolled into a monthly shop inspection that is completed by a separate set of eyes to gain maximum input. OSHA recorded injury days counters were placed at each of the shops as a reminder to all staff to be safety conscious. This is also used as an incentive for the shop that reaches a targeted number of days without an accident will receive a staff reward.
“With the help of our shop managers buy-in we reviewed maintenance class scheduling and guidelines for preventative maintenance work orders,” said Ron Kennedy, CEM. In terms of preventive maintenance, Sarasota implemented a data-driven life cycle cost analysis to match maintenance intervals more accurately. Kennedy added, “Over the course of the past year we reviewed our active assets to complete a full life cycle cost analysis. We currently hold over 300 maintenance classifications of assets. We reviewed each asset profile for historic data, maintenance costs, total capital value to establish true life cycles and future replacement costs based on a pre-determined inflation factor. At the completion of the study, we found that we were able to extend specific classes of life cycles and adjust our recurring chargeback rates for an over budgetary reduction of $2 Million dollars in our Acquisition fund.”
