Investigating the Police Authority (Part 1)

The West Yorkshire Police Authority has a major stake in the efficiency and effectiveness of its fuel management strategy. For it operates a fleet of some 910 vehicles with an annual budget for fuel of around £1.9 million. Naturally such expenditure is continuously under review for potential savings.

As well as vehicle orientated measures such as the evaluation of advanced diesel engines and the introduction of dual fuel - liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) / petrol powered patrol cars, the authority has also upgraded its in-house fuel storage facilities to provide better management support at less cost.

Traditionally, the West Yorkshire Police Authority has purchased a proportion of its fuel supplies in bulk, taking advantage of its purchasing power to obtain wholesale prices. At one time the force maintained twenty supply outlets, all located at police stations within the force area. Over the years this number has been reduced to ten sites as a result of changing requirements and the introduction of more stringent health and safety regulations concerning the location of petroleum storage facilities.

"As in many aspects of our operations, the cost-benefit obtained by buying our fuel in bulk came under scrutiny as part of a routine review," explains Information Support Officer, Andrew Brown. "A cost comparison study undertaken in 1999 had shown that buying fuel supplies in bulk was achieving savings of around £16K per annum when compared to using fuel cards to obtain fuel from retail outlets."

"Of immediate concern however, was the fact that our fuel usage monitoring equipment needed to be replaced to ensure year 2000 compliance. The cost quoted by the incumbent supplier for a replacement system was considerable and we estimated it would take around four years to recover by way of potential savings."

"This did not provide sufficient justification for maintaining the in-house system and so we began the search for a more cost-efficient solution for upgrading the fuel dispensing and monitoring equipment."

The authority's pump maintenance service provider recommended the Merridale Auditor FX as a possible solution. Following a demonstration, terms were agreed and a contract covering eleven installations was completed successfully within eight weeks. Developed by MIS Fuel Monitoring of Wolverhampton, the new system, not only cost less it offered exceptional reliability and could be incorporated within the existing service contract.

Since the Merridale control boxes were a direct replacement of the previous systems, the installations were very straightforward using the same electrical connections to the pump dispenser. A simple GSM telephone link provides communications with the headquarters base station.

Also being based on standard Windows software the operating system was fully compatible with the authority's existing fleet management system. This meant that database records of the fleet vehicles could be downloaded directly to the Merridale FX system thus saving set-up time and avoiding any possible errors caused by manual input.

The Merridale solution also enabled the West Yorkshire Police Authority to retain the benefits provided by having its own fuelling facilities. This strategy proved to be of enormous advantage during the subsequent fuel crisis of September 2000.

"We are proud to say that during the crisis the authority was able to not only meet its own requirements, but we also provided fuel for supporting contractors such as Customs and Excise vehicles and Group Four who provide court security," says Andrew Brown. "We spent many late nights in co-ordinating emergency supplies and ensuring that all the divisions within our force area were able to get access to fuel."

"The Merridale system provides a reading on the tank contents. So as soon as the situation looked likely to disrupt future deliveries we were able to check our existing stock and get all our tanks topped up. From there on we used the Merridale system to provide a daily update on consumption and provide forward projections on our ability to provide emergency supplies as well as continue our essential policing operations."