Bus fleet maintenance plan: how to build one

Do you understand the scale of the responsibility involved in caring for a bus fleet and handling passenger transport?

Beyond promoting operational safety, attention must be paid to transport users’ comfort and experience.

That is why, unlike with a freight vehicle, maintenance should include items such as checking seat upholstery, individual lighting and air conditioning, among other items specific to this mode of transport.

For these inspections to happen, you need planning, right? So learn about:

• Types of maintenance for a bus fleet;
• Tools to make maintenance management easier;
• What a bus fleet maintenance plan must include.

Types of maintenance for a bus fleet

Preventive

The main goal of this maintenance type is to anticipate vehicle problems and failures, preventing loss of fleet operational efficiency and productivity.

Although many operations still rely largely on corrective maintenance, prevention can help reduce costs and improve vehicle performance when there is planning, inspection history and workshop follow-up.

This is because it is performed according to advance planning and specific schedules.

Based on the average useful life of vehicle components and even the bus itself, you can determine the ideal frequency for vehicle inspection.

Corrective

This maintenance occurs when the problem is already present and needs correcting. Generally, the problem is a bus item that has broken or a mechanical failure.

In these cases, the vehicle must remain stopped until repaired.

Managers tend to prefer it because it is simple: just fix the items that broke. But, generally, it is a low-productivity process with high costs involved.

Predictive

Less common and much more expensive, predictive maintenance includes installing tags and sensors on each bus.

As routes are driven, these items can determine how each vehicle operates and performs. Through the vibration and sounds produced, they identify the vehicle’s average useful life and when it is close to developing problems.

In a way, its function is similar to preventive maintenance, but it can identify problems even earlier. This is because the technologies are more sensitive than drivers at detecting emerging failures.

Maintenance management tools for a bus fleet

Maintenance management system

Such a system can be quite comprehensive and also cover all the items mentioned below, such as the digital inspection checklist and work order control.

But not all systems do. Some may focus more on visualizing vehicle problems, while others improve management of budgets, services and parts inventory.

You should always check the features available in the maintenance management system you are interested in. That way, you choose the one that best meets your bus fleet’s needs.

Checklist app

The digital checklist, as this app may also be called, is a way to perform bus inspections more quickly.

Instead of carrying paper and a clipboard around the bus, the entire process uses only a phone. Besides being practical for drivers, when a checklist is completed, the data is included in the system and available for managers to keep track of incidents recorded by the team.

Maintenance indicators

Although not exactly a tool in themselves, maintenance indicators are indispensable for good bus fleet management. They indicate the results of routine actions in your operation.

You can identify failures and improvements by analyzing indicators such as the number of incidents in the period, spending per repair and incidents per driver.

Other alternatives, focused more on vehicles, are calculating a bus’s average repair time and its reliability.

5S methodology

The 5S methodology is a management approach based on the principles of:

• Use: discarding what is no longer useful to management and the fleet;
• Organization: determining methods and standards for controlling each stage of the transport operation;
• Cleaning: keeping the work environment and fleet buses clean and sanitized;
• Health: prioritizing the physical and mental health of everyone involved in the operation, through both respectful treatment among employees and the implementation of processes that promote fleet productivity and speed;
• Discipline: defining company culture, identifying the ethical and moral codes to follow to ensure the integrity of employees and customers.

Each of these stages brings actions to improve services and optimize the fleet’s operational routines.

Work order control

In many cases, the checklist platform has this feature. If yours does not, you need to consider an efficient way to manage your fleet’s work orders.

They identify the service to perform, describing the issue found and the desired solution. Sometimes, they request a quote for the service.

It is fundamental to keep a history of these orders to avoid losing important information that could help your fleet analysis and decision-making.

What your bus fleet maintenance plan must include

Routine

You should establish the ideal routine so maintenance happens whenever necessary and in the correct way. Answer questions such as:

• What should happen daily?
• Who is responsible for each task?
• Which tools must drivers have available?
• When should a bus’s data be collected and analyzed?

Among many other questions, these already give you an idea of where to start and what your bus fleet maintenance plan should describe.

Organization

The bus fleet maintenance plan’s structure should be well organized so everyone can understand and follow it as needed.

Define throughout your document:

• Vehicle identification;
• Expected costs (purchases, services, cleaning, etc.);
• Appropriate use of vehicles and tools;
• Routine description;
• Technologies and maintenance management tools used;
• Methods for analysis and keeping track of results.

Maintenance schedule

Inspections should take place with some frequency, requiring checklists for different intervals: daily, weekly, every two weeks and monthly. In some cases, there are also quarterly, six-monthly and annual lists.

It is up to you to identify the items to check and the average time before they need service, thus scheduling checks before that time is reached.

You should also plan preventive services you already know must take place, such as tire rotation, wheel balancing and alignment.

It is useful to have an expected date for them but adjust it, bringing it forward or postponing it as you consider appropriate. This is because these services can be planned by mileage or date, and each bus may reach the expected milestone at different times.

A vehicle will not always reach the expected milestone within the time planned by the manager, who can therefore also adjust the schedule as needed according to the mileage control carried out.

Data collection and analysis

You need to define the maintenance tools to use daily, finding the best alternatives for collecting the data you want to keep track of.

For example, if you need greater control over incidents per driver, you need to implement a digital checklist with a signature or a system to control trips and drivers.

Whatever your goal, technologies for collecting and organizing data are crucial. They also facilitate the analyses you need through automatic report generation.

List of items to inspect

In a bus fleet, you need to pay attention to some criteria more specific to this vehicle type. As we said, interior cleaning and checking seat upholstery are indispensable factors.

The most common items should also be included in inspection, such as bus tires, suspension, engine and brakes.

Besides these, list all the bus items that need frequent checks. From this list, you can group items with similar inspection intervals in the same checklist.

This makes your schedule more complete and effective.

Learn how one of the largest companies in Santa Catarina, Brazil, organized and optimized maintenance for its bus fleet using Prolog solutions.