Steve Kirkland and Maggie Laird, Fleet Management Consultants.

Compliance is the act of being in alignment with guidelines, regulations, and/or legislation. Today’s fleets of every type are required to comply with rules or orders from within and outside of their organizations.

While this is one more ‘thing’ that you as fleet and maintenance directors have to deal with, it can help mitigate risks, reach strategic goals, and meet operational and financial reporting objectives; as well as help you avoid costly diversions.

So where do you start? You have to identify who is driving the request for compliance and what the requirements are. For instance, there are federal and state regulations such as DOT and driver/operator trip inspections that are mandated. In addition, there are requirements on how long you have to keep your maintenance records, and which license(s) and permits each vehicle has. Dossier has the ability to track all maintenance activities, all driver requests, and all permits and licenses by vehicle. There is no limit to the number of years of data that Dossier will track on each unit.

Internally, there are other compliance issues to track. Your finance department may want to track parts pricing; you verify the new units you buy meet the specifications that were included in the bid or purchase order; and your customers may have a service agreement regarding costs, downtime, and warranty/repeat repairs. You may have formal maintenance performance indicators that you have to track and report on for upper management. Do you complete the PM services on time? Are you reporting direct labor and cost per mile/hour within the guidelines? Are you replacing the units within the established parameters for cost effective replacement? Are you staying within the approved maintenance and fuel budget – if not – why not? All of these items can be tracked and reported with the use of Dossier software: repair history by VMRS, PM compliance reporting, standard jobs, utilization and cost per mile at both the unit and fleet level, fuel analyses, and lifecycle analyses are all available by tracking maintenance and operating costs through Dossier.

Setting up your system to focus on the requirements for compliance and training staff to track the information correctly and consistently will ensure you have the ability to adhere to the required items in your compliance program, and help establish or improve your policies and procedures.

For more information on the Dossier Maintenance Management System, or for help in establishing a compliance program, contact us at improvemyfleet@dossiersystemsinc.com.