Neath Port Talbot CBC
Review and 3 year partnership in passenger transport and fleet management
We completed an initial review of all aspects of transport operations for Neath Port Talbot CBC during the latter part of 2010 designed to develop a change plan and financial improvement targets from the delivery of transport services. The key aspect covered in the review included:
- Vehicle fleet; fleet size, procurement, maintenance operations, maintenance facilities, IT systems, productivity and costs.
- Education transport; mainstream and SEN home to school transport provision, in-house and contracted services, route rationalisation and procurement of contracted transport.
- Social care transport; home to day care transport for SC clients, in-house and contracted services, route rationalisation and procurement of contracted transport.
- Transport Management; management structure for transport services, skillsets and capabilities, processes and systems, financial management and control, creation of an Integrated Transport Unit (ITU).
The review identified a range of improvement options across all transport services and set target revenue savings in the order of £1.4m per annum to be delivered by a three year change project.
Our team were subsequently engaged to deliver a three year change project which ran from February 2011 to February 2014, implementing the following key initiatives;
- Addressed under-performing vehicle tracker systems to support reductions in overall fleet size by 18%. Improved maintenance productivity from the use of management information and improved performance management systems.
- Re-tendered all mainstream and SEN home to school transport using electronic tendering and reverse auctions, providing support throughout to the taxi and minibus contractor community. Managed fundamental changes to the Education Home to School Transport Policy, including development of a business case to amend home to school policy, detailed public consultation and implementation of changes and removal of denominational school transport entitlement and introduction of charging for Post 16 students. This delivered a further £600k of efficiency savings.
- Transformation of transport management, including full management re-structure to integrate transport and carried out in line with HR protocols. We streamlined processes and procedures, updating management information and data collections systems.
By the completion of the implementation in February 2014, financial improvement targets had been exceeded, with annual revenue savings of £2.09m per annum and cumulative net savings across the entire project of £3.89m. The management structures and skillsets were put in place for the internal staff to run transport operations internally, which they have been doing successfully for the last 15 months.
Project Achievements
- Annual revenue savings of £2.09m
- Cumulative net savings across the entire project of £3.89m
