Welcome

1. Welcome to the Preventative Maintenance Planning, Training and Technical Assistance Program Session Sponsored by the College of Business at Florida State University and Florida Department of Transportation

2. Maintenance Plans Required by FTA for vehicles purchased using federal and/or state grant funding PrMPT can assist with developing a maintenance plan by using the Maintenance Plan Questionnaire

3. Maintenance Plans Maintenance plans should cover, at a minimum: • Maintenance goals • Fleet inventory • Preventative maintenance procedures • Pre-trip/Post-trip inspection procedures • Annual inspection procedures • Lift inspection procedures • Road call procedures • Accident procedures • Warranty procedures • Parts inventory, if applicable • Information systems, if applicable • On-site fueling procedures, if applicable

4. Vehicle Files Vehicle history files should include, at a minimum: • Vehicle identification such as Unit ID, Make/model, VIN • Date, mileage, and description of each inspection, maintenance service, repair or lubrication performed; • If not owned by the transit agency, the name of the person or company furnishing service with this vehicle • The name and address of any business firm performing an inspection, maintenance, lubrication or repair; and • Preventative maintenance inspection checklists • Repair estimates and/or receipts • Warranty information

5. Preventative Maintenance Inspections Vehicles under warranty should be inspected using the OEM recommendations and mileage intervals When vehicles are no longer under warranty, FDOT recommends using the ABC progressive inspection method. Inspection intervals should not exceed 6,000 miles unless approved by FDOT.

6. ABC Inspections

7. Annual Inspections Each bus is required by the Florida Administrative Code 14-90.009 to have an annual safety inspection. The ruling outlines in detail each item on your bus that needs inspected and how to document deficiencies found and repaired. You can use a “C” inspection as your annual safety inspection. If your “C” inspection is a 24,000 mile inspection and a bus does not reach this mileage goal in a calendar year, schedule it to be performed at a predetermined date/mileage and document it as your annual safety inspection.

8. Pre-trip/post-trip Inspections Before a driver begins a scheduled route a pre-trip inspection must be performed. Any safety defects that are found must be repaired and the defect card signed by a designated employee before the bus can be placed into service. If an outside shop is performing the repair the defect report can be attached to the invoice and filed in the vehicles history file to document the repair.

9. Pre-trip/Post-trip Inspections During the scheduled route if any defects are found that did not result in the bus being taken off of the road the driver can note the defects on the defect form. A designated employee responsible for checking the defect forms must do so and determine if the bus can start its next regularly scheduled route or must be held for repair. If the bus is close to an inspection and can wait for the repair inform the shop of known defects at the time of the inspection. This will clear up any known defects and prevent repeat write ups.

10. Outsourcing Your agency should set standards for the contractors to follow. Such standards are: • Provide your preventative maintenance checklist to the outsource shop conducting your preventative maintenance inspections • Provide the Preventative Maintenance Standards Manual to outsource garage as a guidelines of how inspections should be carried out

11. Outsourcing FDOT recommends utilizing a service agreement with your outsource garage to formalize maintenance procedures, cost, and responsibilities. Service agreements serve to protect your agency when outsourcing your maintenance.

12. Proactive Maintenance Proactive maintenance describes the process of repairing or replacing vehicle components before they experience a failure. Proactive maintenance can be achieved through: • Preventative maintenance inspections • Identifying failure trends • Initiating campaigns

13. Proactive Maintenance Saves Cost With systematic Preventative Maintenance Inspections in place the unnecessary replacement of parts, labor charges, and a tow charges can been avoided. An agency can also avoid overnight part shipments, paying overtime labor charges due to emergency repairs, and possibly paying drivers overtime due to rescheduling routes.

14. Identifying Failure Trends Failure trends can be identified by analyzing vehicle component failures and noting the mileage at which they failed. Vehicle maintenance software programs are especially helpful when making these determinations.

15. Initiating a Campaign This data collected while identifying failure trends can be used to initiate a campaign to replace the vehicle component on all similar vehicles before the component experiences a failure.

16. Initiating a Campaign ALTERNATORS You find that the alternators on particular models in your fleet are failing at 65,000 miles. With each failure there was a road call and a tow charge, the bus was down until the parts were shipped and the emergency repair could be made. To avoid the unscheduled repair and added costs the alternators can be scheduled to be replaced on a campaign at 60,000 miles.

17. Proactive Maintenance Saves Cost By implementing a preventive maintenance inspection program your maintenance costs may increase at first then level off. Contributing factors to temporary increase in cost: • How maintenance was performed in the past. • The size of your fleet. • The age of your fleet. • Extra labor hours to make all necessary repairs. • Parts costs.

18. Reactive Maintenance Reactive maintenance is responding to failures instead of anticipating them • Limits agency’s ability to plan and schedule maintenance • Creates a continual cycle of responding to chance failures • Requires emergency repairs to put buses back in service • Creates an unmanageable and costly situation

19. Hidden Costs of Emergency Repairs • Administrative duties • Contacting wrecker services to arrange towing • Rescheduling trips to cover routes • Notifying clients of delays • Extra invoicing • Opportunity cost

20. Benefits of Scheduled Maintenance

21. Scheduled Maintenance Saves Cost Over $1,100.00 dollars was spent between a scheduled brake reline and a complete brake failure including the tow charge.

22. Benefits of Scheduled Maintenance

23. Scheduled Maintenance Saves Cost $1,480.00 was spent on the front wheel bearing failure as opposed to a normal $150.00 front wheel bearing repack.

24. Monitoring Maintenance You do not have to be a maintenance expert to keep up a maintenance program. There are specific ways to monitor your buses performance that will reveal the level of service you are receiving from your shop performing your preventive maintenance inspections.

25. Monitoring Maintenance Once a preventive maintenance inspection is completed it is very important to monitor driver’s reported defects, road calls and any other unscheduled maintenance. Compare all unscheduled repairs to the previous inspection to see if any of the occurrences could have been prevented. Any unscheduled repairs can result in unexpected expenses and downtime.

26. Road Calls In the event of a road call it is a common practice in fleet maintenance to record the call and keep a record of the failure. To monitor maintenance performance road calls must be analyzed to determine the root cause of the problem. If this is done you can avoid future road calls.

27. Road Call Prevention If you have road call failures soon after a preventive maintenance inspections on items that should have been checked you need to have a meeting with your shop and discuss the problems you are having. Remember: You are paying for a service and the shop is responsible.

28. Key Points to Remember Someone in your agency must be responsible for maintenance and remember you do not have to be a maintenance expert to maintain maintenance files or to analyze maintenance repairs and cost. Once a maintenance plan is established it only takes a small amount of time to maintain the files and analyze the data. You will save time and money by controlling the scheduling of your buses in for maintenance instead of your maintenance being unscheduled with unexpected expenses and downtime.

29. Other Services and Resources Comprehensive maintenance reviews that evaluate the following areas of your maintenance program: • Maintenance plan • Vehicle files compliant with state and federal guidelines • Preventative maintenance procedures • Pre-trip/Post-trip inspection procedures • Road call procedures • Warranty procedures • Vehicle appearance At the conclusion of a maintenance review, recommendations are provided as necessary to strengthen the maintenance procedures and practices. Resources and tools will also be provided, as needed, to address needs of the maintenance department.

30. Other Services and Resources PrMPT offers free pre-trip training class as a refresher course for drivers. The class covers how to identify and properly document defects while performing a pre-trip/post-trip inspection.

31. Other Services and Resources PrMPT is in the final stages of developing a free online maintenance program that will include: • Vehicle fleet and component information • Tracking spreadsheets for upcoming maintenance inspections • Preventative maintenance inspections • Work orders and repair information • Inquiry section to assist with analyzing maintenance trends and costs

32. Questions? For further information, please contact the PrMPT office at (850) 644-2509 Laurie Revell, Project Manager lrevell@cob.fsu.edu Julie Eck, Program Specialist jeck@cob.fsu.edu Steve Stopiak, Maintenance Consultant sstopiak@admin.fsu.edu