Episode 132 - Upgrading Your Fleet Maintenance Facility for the Future

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Fleet Success Show, our regular podcast where we talk all things that are fleet. I'm Tony Yankovich, director of RTA's Fleet Consulting Group, and I'm going to be your show's host today. Uh, in this episode, we're going to talk a little bit about your fleet maintenance facility, and more specifically, especially for those that run your own in-house maintenance operation, what you need to start thinking about in terms of what your shop could or will look like in the next 5 to 10 years. I often tell people that next to the people working for the fleet operation, the facility is really the most important piece of the fleet puzzle. If your facility doesn't effectively support your mission, meaning if it's too small, you don't have the right number of bays, the bays aren't sized correctly, or the building has a number of facility deficiencies, the facility can actually hinder operations and make you a less productive maintenance provider. So today I'm so super excited to be joined by Norman Berrientos. I've known Norman for very, uh, for many years. I think we first crossed paths about— oh my gosh, Norman, almost 25 years ago.

I think so.

Yeah, exactly. Norman's the president of Berrientos Design and Consulting. Uh, he has more than 40 years of architectural design experience under his belt. Um, and I think it's important to understand that Norman and his company are one of the very few architectural design firms in the country that actually specialize in designing fleet maintenance shops in addition to all kinds of government facilities. So with that, Norman, welcome to the show.

Tony, great to be here. Thank you. Yes, I remember we first met. You looked a little different. You had a little bit of hair there going on.

Right, exactly. I had a little more hair, a little younger and a little thinner.

Yeah. And I was just probably on my 10th or so garage at that time and Yeah, as you said, we are— my company and myself specialize in fleet maintenance facilities. And overall, we also include operations for field groups and equipment maintenance as well. So buildings that deal with vehicles, heavy equipment, shops for specialty trades, and then the field crews that go with that and the yards too. So that's been our specialty. That's what we focus on across the country.

Well, excellent. I started my career in city government for public works operation and then kind of fell into fleet after that. It was one of those other assigned duties. But working in public works, you know, you really understand the importance of how a facility and a site and a yard and a campus is really focused on that mission is so essential to the operations. So Norman, tell me, so you guys, you've been in the business a long time. Your company specializes in this. So roughly how many facilities and garages have you guys designed over the years?

Yes, 108. I just counted. We've done planning, design studies for 108. We do about 8 to 10 a year. It's picked up over the last 15 years, how many we do per year. So we've had about 50 of those built. And I probably had initial talks with another 100 shops. So I have walked through intentionally as an architect in fleet shops, probably about 150 shops where I have like taken a look and I'm always listening to how they lay out the shop, why they laid it out, what kind of practice, how they're trying to gain efficiencies. So as I got further into this fleet maintenance facility, I realized that I could offer a lot of my viewpoints I have been gathering from the whole countrywide experience and how to lay out the shops and what the fleet managers were trying to achieve on the floor.

Well, that's great because, you know, a lot, again, I've been doing this for a long time as well and been in so many fleet shops and some fleet shops really support the mission, some don't. And a lot of times when they have an opportunity to either renovate or construct a new facility, they will hire a generalist architectural firm and when they come in, you know, I like to tell people, you know, they'll sit there across the desk from me and say, okay, what do you need? What do you want? We can build that. We can design that. We're going to make it look great. But if you really don't have that fleet management background or the fleet maintenance background, you don't have context. You know, you don't understand what the challenges really are when designing a facility to efficiently meet operations. So it's great that people like you are out there that actually specialize in this because it's so important to make sure that they get what they're they're really needing to support their operation. I think one of the things that, you know, I'll have to defer to you, but one of the things that interests me is when an organization or a fleet manager or a public works director gets an opportunity to build a new facility, this is a once-in-a-career opportunity. You know, these buildings aren't being replaced every 5, 10 years like a vehicle. They're there for the long haul. So Norman, based on your experience and your professional expertise, how long really is the lifespan of a fleet maintenance type of building?

Yeah, it depends on— well, factors that affect it are a few. One, your fleet, be it your company or your community, may be growing. So there's growth of the fleet. And then there's diversity of your fleet that you're pulling into the shop bays or hanging out in the yard and the type of equipment. So that diversity might increase. And then there is sometimes it's you do, you can add on here and there, but you found your site is not configured properly. And, and sometimes over 20, 30 years, depending how fast your community is growing, you find out that your, your fleet shop is not in a great place anymore. There's other developments, more traffic, other competing interests that like to buy this land even. So these things, my general range is about 30 to 40 years. You really need to take a look at your shop. Is it really serving your current workflow operations, or is the shop compromising? Is it pushing you to do things such as stacking up vehicle bays and stuffing parts in different odd corners of the building and the yard? Really lose inventory track. So, and the other thing is attraction, HR attraction of tech talent and even managerial talent to work in the shop. Is it, have other competitors outpaced the quality of the work environment? That's one. I really think inventory management is key when the shop becomes too small and they can't stock and distribute the materials properly to the tech on the floor, you're going to spend more time walking around to get— if you can't find where is it, and then what the state of that item is. So things get out of place. And I, I like to think that repair garages' bays are designed for a specific vehicle class, or heavy, medium, light. And if you start overlapping the type of vehicles that in that bay that it really wasn't intended to, you're mismatching the equipment around that bay for that vehicle type you're pulling in. And then there's the, the, there's a whole thing of sustainability, energy efficiency, just being good on the environment, taking opportunities for sustainable renewable energies. And then finally, there's just the general wear and tear of a building. Just a fleet shop is, you've got vehicles moving around. Sometimes they have their bed up, they hit the overhead door, they're heavy, they tear up the slab. If there's any kind of soil weakness, it'll sink the slab, crack it. Trench drains blow out, they fill up, they crack. Heating systems really only designed to last 30 to 40 years. So you'll find the ventilation in the shop just isn't functioning, and, or if it does, it's really loud and noisy and nobody wants to use it and they just open up the doors.

Exactly.

Yeah, that's briefly it. I could go into more, but I'll just stop there for now.

Okay, great. And that's a great segue, Norman, because, you know, I've been in the business for, you know, 35+ years now or so. And one of the things that I can honestly say is within the last 5 years or so, there's been more change in fleet maintenance practices and fleet management initiatives in that period since I started, you know, nearly, like I said, 30, 35 years ago. And I think that's going to continue to change. I think there's more evolution in fleet today that's going to really impact the way the facility needs to look in the future. One of the ones, obviously, that's at the forefront of all fleet managers plates is fleet electrification. Can you talk a little bit about the impact that organizations, you know, adding electric vehicles to their fleet, adding hybrid vehicles to the fleet, what kind of impact does that have actually on the actual facility?

Yes, and I have been studying this. I've been collaborating with fleet managers in California who are well into this whole low or zero emission vehicle requirements. And as far as the facilities go, it's— there's a few things directly is there's various building codes and national regulations that are coming online that address repairing the vehicle, electric vehicles in an enclosed repair garage. And what those are, there already are building requirements for just combustion engines in a garage. And even those have been upgrading over the years, more detection for CO and then more ventilation, purging of the air and tailpipe exhaust. But so there already is a level of building safety needed, and that's been increasing for combustion engine. But for electric vehicles, There's the issue of arcing and static discharge and battery handling, especially damaged battery handling, that are requiring in general more space around the vehicle to prevent an arcing incident of the electric vehicle with a battery in it. So, the bays for an electric vehicle bay need to be wider. On average about 20 feet wider. It's a lot. And, and just 20 feet on the tail and the, and the front end as well. So they're much larger. And, and then you have to deal with removing the batteries and moving those around. And obviously these are very heavy. And we— shops should have a battery lab room to deal— work on the batteries isolated from the rest of the facility. So the other things I'm seeing is you really need a clean shop. We're really heading toward the clean room, like you take in the computer industry, a room approach. You need a space that doesn't have dust floating around. You don't have birds flying around. You don't have a lot of wind.

The Public Works campus, which freed up some administrative space in one of the, in the facility where fleet was housed, and they actually turned in, I think it was 3 offices and a, like a lobby area. Into a wellness center. They brought in some, you know, cardiovascular pieces of equipment. They brought in some free weights. They brought in some dumbbells, put some mirrors on the wall. So it was really nice. And people not only from Fleet, but anywhere on campus could come to that space and, you know, get a quick workout on lunch or before or after work. So it was really nice. And actually, one of my favorite stories is that I worked with a fleet out in the state of Washington. And one of the things that they did was, and I think most people are now familiar with the game of pickleball, you know, it's kind of a mix between tennis and badminton. But what they did is they actually painted pickleball stripes or lines on the floor in the shop. And then once a week, they pull all the vehicles out, move the lifts to the side, and they actually have an hour or so in the afternoon that the technicians have a little mini pickleball tournament. So they do that from time to time. So, you know, So it's just, it's thinking of ways to creatively use that space to where you're providing some type of, like you said, employee comfort, employee wellness, a way to keep them active and healthy.

Sure. And even on that, we'll provide a little patio. Maybe they put a grill out there and they may organize some kind of cook-off occasionally, but it helps morale and they like, they want to get out. And get out of the shop environment. Just a few other things I think is good for a shop is acoustic paneling in key locations around the wall. I've had techs tell me it's very noisy in here, and, you know, the air compressor goes off or the tools are going off. It's just, it can be stressful all day for that. And putting paneling where you can either you take them off or they're washable is a good thing. So I had, oh, air conditioning is another thing. And it may sound like a luxury and like, well, we keep overhead doors open all the time, but in northern climates, it's energy loss. So you're just blowing out the energy out the door. And a lot of shops, a lot of, it's a very typical approach is a series of overhead doors. You know, down the middle, nose to nose. So there may be 20 doors and, you know, half of them could be open at any given time. And so we definitely advocate air conditioning for many reasons. One is to keep the overhead doors down, conserve the energy. And second, there are a lot of shops that happen to be put in industrial areas and maybe near a pit. Other industrial uses, and there's a lot of dust flying around, and it just, it'll get into the shop when the doors are open. And I think particularly with more electronics, it's a nuisance for the work environment to have that in there. And also there's things like anybody could walk in into the shop through an overhead door and say, "Hey, I brought my vehicle in." And even if they're part of your city or your organization, you know, I understand that the flea people don't want the non-flea people just to walk in and meander on and, "How's my truck doing?" And so keeping over a door is one way of telling them, "Don't come in." Right, right. Go to that door over there. And there's things like birds and some places have rodents that get in. And I think it's security too. In some areas that might have a high-risk area, you know, people across the street can see all this all this equipment in the shop, you know, it may just lure them in. And some shops are noisy. I've heard of neighbors a few blocks away saying, I can hear the noise of the Fleet Garage going on. So there's a lot of good reasons to shut the overhead door. But it's such a traditional thing to do. I mean, 95% of the shops I see have the doors open, and even in the winter. So, uh, it's something I definitely advocate.

Well, and a great point because, you know, I live in Kansas, um, you know, we're not in, in the desert or anything, but it gets hot here for a couple of months, you know, July and August, September a little bit. Um, but one of the, the municipal organizations that— I mean, literally, they built a shop probably 2 miles from my house, and it's on a fairly busy traffic way, and they did a real nice job of making it look pretty, but then they also air-conditioned the shop. And when I was over there, I took a tour over there and, and I asked him, I said, you know, we're not in Arizona. Why did you air condition the shop? And they said, well, you know, it, it's technician retention and, and attraction and recruitment.

Yeah.

Because we can't pay what the private, um, you know, shops down the road are paying. But what we can do is we can offer them a brand new facility that's clean, that's air conditioned. And some of these technicians are willing to take, you know, a dollar or $2 less an hour because they're gonna work in a nice work environment. So I really do think it's important.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have one other thing. Is it more on the topic as fleet garages evolve and most communities I work with, they're evolving. They've changed a lot organizationally over the last 30 years, more management structures. Maybe they've added a fleet analyst, maybe there's a fleet director and a fleet manager. There's various, you know, lead mechanics structure. And so they get more sophisticated and maybe I can use the word even there's more professionalism. That I see, especially when you— I look at a small municipal shop and then you get the larger one. It's just, you know, it gets more complicated. But with that, there's two aspects to that. When the fleet organization gets more complicated and more managerially structured is they just need a different kind of room layout. There's just— there's more offices, there's more functions operating on the floor. Their parts gets— I see that particularly gets more complicated. There's maybe a distinct loading area now, an area for inventorying and tagging, uh, of course the shelving, um, and then distribution to the mechanics, or if they have operators like street crews, you know, maybe they're in a different window. Uh, so the whole parts management gets more, uh, more complicated and requires more room types. Like, for obviously you want to keep your bulk fluids in one room type, And flammables and gasoline, another one. Maybe the mechanics, PP&E, and another. And of course, tools and spray applications that might be used on the shop floor. So, it's a good time to think about your parts and how— what are the major activities, and then what are the different inventory items, and where you want to deploy them so that they're near either the tech or they're near the operators, and there's some parts that you can secure, like power tools or specialty mechanics tools. And so that's, that's a good exercise to do when you're upgrading your facility.

Well, exactly. And Norman, you're, you go through and talk about that stuff and about 900 questions come to my mind for you. But I know we're at about the end of our podcast for today. But what I would like to say is I would like to bring you back, Norman, if you're willing to at some point. I think we, it would be interesting for a lot of the people to talk more about the process of, you know, how do the, how do you start with the programming of the facility? How you go to, to, you know, schematic design, how do you go to the actual design and all the way through construction process? I think that'd be a great series of podcasts. Yeah. But one, one quick final question for you and then we'll, we'll shut this down. But, um, How long typically does it take from the time an organization says, yes, we need a new facility, let's go ahead and start, you know, planning it until, you know, shovels are in the ground?

Yeah, at least 3 years. And the first year is what we call a facility program where we define the space needs of your building and your yard. And we also look at the proper relationships and sequence of where these yard activities and building activities need to be. And really tell the group, you know, you may be 100,000 square feet and have 16 service bays, but we think you're at a point where you need to be at 150,000 square feet. And you, you know, you need 50% more bays than you have right now. So there is a bit of a management thing which we work with you, like how many repair bays, you know, should we really have for our fleet? What kind of inventory should we be keeping? So that's just a lot of internal review time, thinking, strategizing, where should we take the fleet organization? I think another thing that usually happens is we realize that fleet needs to be on their own now. Maybe they don't need to be under DPW. They have their own truck access and sequence and they really don't need the trash sanitation and the streets vehicles cruising by their overhead doors and then going by their yard. So things like that need to be worked out. And I think it's also, Operation, you brought up that you need to have a discussion. What's the level of service operation you're going to have? Like, how much are we going to do in-house? Or when, at what point are we going to shop this down the street to Caterpillar or something like that? So if you decide, no, we want to do that in-house now in our expanded shop, we're going to eventually hire more techs. We're going to get those lifts and get those tire changing equipment, let's say, for heavy construction vehicles in here now and plan up for that. So we need to know that. So that's why that first year is an internal discussion of where you're going. And then we help you decide, plan out how much you need now for that. And then the design process, You know, it's about 9 months of hard design. We say engineering design, look at your site engineering, get all the specs down for the lifts and shop equipment. We do maintenance shop equipment selection and specification. We think that should be part of the architecture when you do that. And then the construction is about a year as well. So it's a 3-year process.

Okay, well great. That's great information. And Norman, what I'd really like to do, I found this very exciting. I would like to bring you back back and, and talk more detail about facilities and, and things that we can help fleet professionals do in their current facility or think about when they do get an opportunity to build a new facility. So if you're willing, I'd love to have you back at some point and we can do that. Yeah, awesome, awesome. Well, Norman, thank you again for, for joining us today. Um, look forward to having you again. And for those listening, um, really want to thank you again for participating and remind you that any feedback that you have, any comments or suggestions for future podcasts, just email them to us at podcast@rtafleet.com, or you can reach out directly to myself or to Norman if you have facility questions. So with that, we'll sign off and thank you very much.

Thank you as well.