City of Mandurah a stand out performer

Risk Matters - Autumn 2023

Row of City of Mandurah plant fleet vehicles

The City of Mandurah was one of the 17 LGIS members who participated in the motor fleet pilot program. Across the City there’s a proactive risk approach and this was apparent when assessing their fleet and plant management.

During the assessment, the LGIS team found:

  • The development of the City’s replacement depot will provide new opportunities to design in controls that help manage risks to vehicles, plant and equipment.
  • Details regarding incident reporting including forms were available via the City’s intranet.
  • The use of fuel cards was governed by a documented fuel card use procedure. Each fuel card was linked to and identified by the vehicle registration number. All card holders were required to acknowledge their acceptance of the related terms of use.
  • Depot vehicles (diesel) were fuelled via an on-site tank using a smart fuel system. Diesel usage and tank levels were regularly audited.

A review of the City’s claims experience showed that at fault claims accounted for 63% of all accidents and almost 60% of all costs. This included failing to stop, colliding with stationary vehicle and striking a stationary object, which together accounted for nearly 50% of all incidents and nearly 50% of all costs.

In general these claims related to driver behaviour and may have been preventable through improved driver awareness and training. It’s important to remember that specific details of individual accidents is unknown and that the risk assessments are concerned with trends and patterns.

The LGIS team worked with the City to:

  • Conduct assessments with key personnel to obtain an understanding of relevant processes and controls.
  • Reviewed relevant supporting documentation.
  • Delivered a report with recommendations for the City to consider.

The assessment identified a number of improvement opportunities for the City to address in order to refine and strengthen its fleet management practices and reduce associated claims and costs.

The scope for this project involved an assessment of the following areas:

Other sections in this season's Risk Matters

"The city was rated on three levels – adequate, area of improvement and attention required. It performed extremely well based on the 16 parameters. They ranked adequate in 13 of their fleet management practices while three still had scope for improvement.”

City’s officials – Bob Cooper (Coordinator, City Fleet) and Brad Hawkins (Senior Safety and Health Advisor, People & Culture) said that their experience was quite insightful while being part of the LGIS’ pilot program.

"We had teams and face to face meetings with Greg Cook (LGIS risk consultant) and found this process to be thorough. He made this easy for us to understand and provide the necessary information. During the assessment process, we identified several gaps; for example our Admin centre carpark vehicles are vulnerable to risk of vandalism. Our staff were vulnerable to potential harm from predators while exiting the admin building. Also, the operations centre fleet vehicles plant and equipment is exposed to weather, increasing the risk of storm damage, corrosion and depreciation.”

The city officials also talked about the fleet management strategies they use to reduce claims and improve safety. They use Plant Assessor to risk assess each item of plant post procurement and then work with the operators to induct them on all the risks associated to help reduce or eliminate any potential incidents. They have also created and implemented a pre-start form for all operators to complete prior to usage. This form auto generates a defect and informs the workshop supervisor and team member supervisor of any faults.

They are also in the process of developing verification of competency program where they will be training and using registered training organisations (RTOs) to provide refresher training to keep all skill sets to a high standard.

Following the LGIS risk assessment, the City has been enthusiastic in closing out recommendations. These include:

  • Security has been looked at for patrolling the area.
  • Some of the car parks have lockable fenced areas.
  • They are also looking to repeat this in other areas across the business.
  • In developing a new operations centre, they will look at including overhead cover for the fleet.

For more information on our motor fleet risk management program, please contact your account manager.

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Row of City of Mandurah plant fleet vehicles

City of Mandurah a stand out performer

The City of Mandurah was one of the 17 LGIS members who participated in the motor fleet pilot program. Across the City there’s
a proactive risk approach and this was apparent when assessing
their fleet and plant management.

Read more »