In February of this year, Israt Hossain from World Food Programme (WFP) in Bangladesh participated in the Fleet Management Fundamentals training. In this article, we are sharing her story with you.
The training inspired Israt to set up an ambitious plan, focused on reducing road traffic crashes and improving transport services that WFP Bangladesh relies on to implement it’s activities.
You can’t improve what you can’t measure
While Israt had a clear idea of which areas to focus on, she recognized that she couldn’t quantify the performance of her fleet. She therefore focused her efforts on looking back at the 2019 data, selecting the right KPIs to monitor and calculate a baseline for these.
Using the root cause analysis method, Israt also dug deeper into recent crash reports to identify the underlying causes of WFP’s crashes.
Covid-19 transformed WFP activities
Due to Coronavirus and the lockdown in Bangladesh, all flights were suspended. The nature of WFP’s activities and the requirements of its fleet changed. Although several programmatic activities were suspended, WFP continued to run emergency operations to support Rohingya refugees in Cox Bazar, as well as COVID-19 emergency activities.
On top of that, Israt’s working environment became more challenging; she now had to engage drivers, administration staff, counterparts in other UN agencies and government officials virtually.
Despite the change in programme requirements and working environment, Israt rose to the challenge and adjusted her plan.
She was able to improve fleet management WFP Bangladesh by:
Re-assessing the size of the fleet and working with HQ and government to disposes of vehicles;
Coordinate training of drivers so that they were competent and equipped to transport Covid patients safely;
Prepare and pilot the internal transport booking system within the country office;
Using data to quantify the impact of these actions in relation to the objectives set out.
Through these initiatives, WFP Bangladesh was able to reduce their road traffic crashes and improve their transport service by 5%.
We are delighted to share that Israt has been awarded the Certificate of Achievement, for applying fleet management concepts to the operating environment and demonstrating the ability to make fleet improvements in a professional setting. This certificate is valued at 65 hours of Continuing Professional Development by CILT International.
Fleet Forum would also like to recognise the management of WFP Bangladesh office for investing in Israt’s professional development and facilitating an environment where she could apply her skills.
What’s next?
WFP Bangladesh is planning to roll out digital logbook, which would be effective in internal controls. Currently manual logbooks are not maintained properly, and it is difficult to analyse them.
Furthermore, they are in the process of recruiting more senior staff to ensure fuel, maintenance costs and other data are captured in corporate system timely and assist in analysis for improved efficiencies.
Are you ready to drive fleet improvements in your organisation?
Our fleet management training is the perfect springboard to give you new concepts and tools as well as guidance to achieve fleet improvement.
Check out our training schedule and sign up for the next training: https://fleetforum-virtualfleet.teachable.com/p/fleet-management-fundamentals
