by
Rachel Hansen | May 26, 2021
For the fifth consecutive year, Chelan County PUD received national recognition as one of the best-performing fleets by an industry trade organization.
The National Association of Fleet Administrators (NAFA) announced Chelan PUD’s fleet ranked 75th in the top 100 fleets in the Americas. The organization tracks more than 38,000 public fleets. It developed the 100 Best Fleets program 20 years ago to recognize the best practices and help taxpayers better understand the value that public fleets provide.
Judges select the winners based on 12 criteria, including accountability, use of technology, team collaboration, creativity in addressing challenges and a high-trust culture.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, utilities have had to take extra measures to continue safe operations. Fleet staff found creative ways to keep up with the workload, training, and communication. The PUD’s fleet assets tend to be older overall, but outsourced maintenance was 20% lower than industry standard. Chelan PUD’s target goal in a normal year is 95% availability for critical assets, and fleet staff achieved 97.6% in 2020.
“For the last five years, our customer service surveys have been at or near 100%, and that says a lot,” said Fleet Supervisor Lance Knudtson.
Fleet Services manages nearly 1,000 pieces of equipment, including line trucks, digger derricks, cranes, tugboats, snow cats, backhoes, mobile substations and much more. The fleet operates in a wide range of seasons and geography in Chelan County, including lowland marshes, shrub steppe, forested mountains, rivers, and lakes. Chelan is the third largest county in Washington state.
“This isn’t a department award, it’s a District award,” Knudtson said. “Everyone at the PUD is working hard serving our community. Keeping the vehicles and equipment safe and operating rests on these guys’ shoulders, and they do an amazing job.”
The PUD ranked 24th in 2020, the highest ranking since the utility earned a spot on NAFA’s top-performance list four years ago.
“The competition gets steeper each year and with that the ranking will go up and down. We will continue to strive to become number one, but until then, it is an honor to be in the top 100,” Knudtson said.
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Providing the best value for the most people for the longest time – chelanpud.org.