To move forward on our discussion from this year’s ACT Expo, NAFA, MEMA and TRC brought together leading public fleets and zero-emission vehicle equipment suppliers in our second meeting to discuss how to better spec equipment that will meet California’s Advanced Clean Fleet regulation for government fleets. This first-of-its-kind event at ACT — and the sessions that follow it — are all intended to broker a dialogue and increase partnership among these two important stakeholder groups.
We know from our meeting at ACT that creating equipment specifications is a painful process for government fleets. And we also know that equipment suppliers generally struggle in responding to these types of procurement. So, we asked ourselves: What can we do to bridge this gap? How can we make it easier for all parties?
For government fleets, we need to remember a few of the realities that exist:
- Most vehicle specifications are extremely outdated for the diesel/gasoline equipment of today.
- Most people developing the specifications are not those operating the vehicles, so a significant gap in knowledge exists.
- Most specification developers are not experts in zero emission vehicle technology.
- Development of specifications takes a lot of time that is simply not available — for example, a single specification can take in excess of 200 hours of staff time.
In our last session, we asked three simple questions to the fleets and suppliers on the call:
- For fleet managers: What specs have you developed that worked well for you and have yielded you products that meet your needs?
- For OEMs/dealers/equipment providers: What specs have you seen that have worked well?
- For everyone: What should fleets avoid when creating specs?
Similar to the first session we had at ACT, it was enlightening to hear some of the very frank dialogue that came about. Some key best practices we took away from this discussion are as follows:
- Avoid being too specific: A general caution was provided that fleets should avoid being too specific in their specs and always provide an “additional options” category in procurement so you are leaving flexibility. You don’t want to make specifications so tight that people are eliminated from bidding.
- Create bench contracts or cooperative agreements: A lot of positive reviews were given on cooperative purchasing and bench contract opportunities where you can work out some of the vehicle specifications and pricing on the backend.
- Consider all specification options and not just cooperative sourcing: While cooperative purchasing was definitely a crowd favorite, criticisms on existing cooperative sourcing opportunities were raised as being far too limiting.
- Leverage cooperative agreements to create sole source justification: Many times the technology options on cooperative agreements are simply too limited so some cities use these types of agreements to justify for sole sourcing a technology that is not yet available on these agreements in front of their governing boards.
- Find and talk to other agencies: Opportunities for fleets to connect with other fleets are essential. Many fleet managers learn what other fleets are doing and set up lunch and learns or field trips to help inform their specification process. Many times, fleets find the different vehicle technologies being used across other government fleets by the equipment providers or dealers themselves. This also allows for another opportunity to piggyback if sourcing has already been done.
- Create multi-purpose specifications: Some of the best examples of successful procurements have been when fleets spec’d out equipment for a unit type and it ended up being able to be used for other equipment as well—e.g., an organics refuse vehicle that could be dual purpose for regular trash pickup.
- Lean into pilots: A lot of equipment providers often use pilots or demonstrations of their technologies and doing these pilots has led to a lot of success at better creating specifications. A word of caution for the equipment providers is to ensure that they are patient through this process. It takes a lot for risk, insurance, and legal to collectively onboard these types of initiatives, and that doesn’t always happen quickly. If suppliers are interested in working with a fleet, the time to start that conversation is now.
- Consider the size of your fleet: The quantity of vehicles in procurements makes a difference. Small fleets likely waste a lot of time developing RFPs for purchasing only 1-2 vehicles, and vehicle manufacturers/dealers struggle to provide the best price without volume sales. This is where multi-agency partnerships, joint RFPs, and cooperatives can become helpful.
- Never ever ever reuse old specifications: The term “nail in a coffin” was used for the effort on just copying/pasting old specifications. Sometimes fleets only buy a piece of particular equipment once every 10 years, so a simple copy/paste can do so much more harm than good.
- Always rereview before releasing to the public: Fleet managers shared that sometimes they’ll sleep on it to reread in the morning and ask: does this actually make sense? Others shared that they’ll ask colleagues or others in similar agencies/fields to review for an extra set of eyes.
- Ensure you are managing for risk and contingency in specifications: This is an evolving market and you need to have a good handle (and way to collect responses) on how warranties and replacement parts are handled, especially in the case of firm dissolution.
Vehicle specification development is definitely an art of “lessons learned” and it was clear that fleets and suppliers alike have all been burned in the past. Our hope is these lessons learned and best practices can support other fleets in navigating this bumpy spec development process.
Our next session will be heavily focused on how to run successful procurements. We’ll be getting into details such as cooperative purchasing (including piggybacking), hot sheet pricing, bench contracts, and RFPs.
If you are a government fleet in California or an equipment supplier, join us! As stated in the meeting, with how quickly technology is changing and how fast government fleets need to adjust to replacing these technologies with lower emission alternatives, we need to all work together.
