Architecture and engineering firm Burns & McDonnell have selected a new Web-based enterprise fleet management system for its nationally distributed fleet of 350 vehicles. Automotive Fleet magazine contacted the company to find out more about the company, the new system, and the processes it's replacing.

The company said its vehicles are primarily half-ton GM pickup trucks used by site superintendents and field engineers. For the new system, Burns & McDonnell selected Chevin’s FleetWave Web-based application, which will replace a non-integrated vehicle reservation and management system.

This new system offers a number of benefits over the previous system, according to Burns & McDonnell, and will replace a number of manual processes. The previous process used by Burns & McDonnell employees to reserve a vehicle started with an employee making a phone call, asking in person, or sending an email. Later, when the driver turned the vehicle in, he or she would complete a form with mileage and days used. Fleet management personnel would then take that form data, and enter a ticket into a company-developed fleet management application built around MS Access 97 (known at the company as the “Car Trip Ticket Tracking System” or the “Fleet Program”).

From there, on a weekly and on a month-end basis, the company would use the application to generate a data file, validated by Administrative Staff, which would then be sent via FTP to a Linux server. Then, another program in the company’s Oracle ERP would re-validate the data, store it in tables in Oracle, and lastly ERP support staff would move the report to Oracle Projects tables.

The company’s Chad Mallory, fleet supervisor for the firm, said the new system will help the company operate in more efficiently and cost-effectively. The new system will streamline driver assignments and related charge-out rates, and correlate this data with the projects company engineers are working on. From there, the system will automatically pass this data to the company’s Oracle project management and billing systems.

Looking ahead, the company plans to integrate the new fleet management application with its human resources and telematics applications, with select national account service providers, and with Comdata’s procurement card, where it will automatically import maintenance and fuel spend data.

By Greg Basich