Hello all, Just curious if anyone has any experience with fleet purchasing. I work for a municipality and am in charge of purchasing all new vehicles and equipment for my dept. I cam from being a mechanic and a mechanic only so I have no idea where to start. I know I need things like the govt mark bid and such but I am not sure what that even is. They put me in this position with no training as the guy I replaced left 3 months before I started. Any help with the process would be greatly appreciated. PJ:Banghead:bash
PJ, Does City Hall have a Purchasing Office or a Director of Purchasing? If so I would start there to get the requirements set for the bidding process. As far as speccing that is based on your municipal needs.
It all goes thru me to my dept head. He gives the yay or nay on the bids. The speccing out isn't too bad I can handle that. essentially just like when im buying a personal truck.
How many different brands of vehicles and equipment does municipality have. Do they favor certain brands? You can let the end users have input on replacement pieces. Is there State or County bid lists in place that you can purchase off of?
Are there any secretaries, I mean office assistants? Usually they know how things are done better than the bosses.
I worked in procurement for the Alaska DOT before coming over to do environmental docs and permits for road projects. There are a number of things to consider. Where is the funding coming from? If it is fed, then there will be more requirements and reporting forms. I noticed that the fleet procurement folks had extremely long spec lists so everything is on a level floor for all bidders and so you get the exact product. You do not want to get less than you are paying for nor do you want a bidder coming back to protest the bid results because the winning bid turned out to be a stripped down model. Once you have your bid package together, try not to engage with a bidder and either give, or appear to give an unfair advantage. Never forget that you are spending someone else's money so you have a legal and moral duty to do it right. Advertise is the most public manner that is practical. Take a look at your agency's policy manual to see if there is anything you need to know. There's a bunch more, but this should be enough to get you thinking on the right track.
See if you an find a similar organization in your state Join and attend the meetings The members will bend over backwards to help each other with advice, sharing specs etc, I work for the county road department and our purchasing manager can't say enough good words about the organization. https://www.mppoa.net/insidepages/about.cfm
Alabama has something similar. What little I know about it is muni's and counties can purchase from a State "contract" pickups and other general items. The state spec's them out and receives bids from dealers. The way I understand it is any municipality, county or public utility can purchase from the pool. We did a job 2 years ago for a small water authority, not part of any city but still a publicly owned entity. They bought all their pickups through this program. They were buying nicely equipped XL F150 4x4's for a great price. PJ if there is something like that available in your state it may be the easiest route.
Thank you all for the info. We mainly stick with Ford for the light/medium duty pickups. I am not sure about the bid list. I guess that is my main question. We don't really have any secretaries in my dept.
yes definitely look for state or county contract.