Reducing vehicle off road (VOR) time is the ultimate goal for any fleet management business. Therefore, when faced with an industry-wide shortage of capacity for body repair, and a six-week lead-time in certain locations, BT Fleet Solutions sought to strengthen its network by introducing new options for body repair.
BT Fleet Solutions currently has 200 fixed site body repair locations, over 150 mobile body repair technicians, and 65 owned mechanical workshops. This combination allows the company to complete around 50% of its body repair the same day, using a variety of its same-day repair solutions.
To increase the exclusive capacity within its network and to further reduce vehicle repair times, BT Fleet Solutions has partnered with Xpress Centres, a specialist in automotive body repairs, to create ‘repair pods’ that will share sites with its mechanical workshops. The first repair pod has been placed at BT Fleet Solution’s Wimbledon site with other repair pods already planned for Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Motherwell, and Bristol.
Xpress Centres will be providing the repair pod and the staff for the joint venture, which will see a reduction in average lead times, with the ability to also schedule body repair in at the same time as other work in the workshop. Thus, reducing overall VOR time.
As well as to increase its ability for sameday repairs, BT Fleet Solutions is also conducting an exclusive trial with Autoglass BodyRepair. The mobile repair service provider is using BT vehicles as the test subjects for its new larger mobile repair unit, which has been designed to accommodate high roof LCVs with ease. Its current mobile repair unit faces height restrictions so is unable to accommodate high roofs or vans with mounted equipment. The model being tested will mean more repairs can be deployed to same-day body repair solutions.
Henry Brace, Managing Director at BT Fleet Solutions, commented, “Capacity issues are a challenge both we and our customers face, making it difficult for us to deliver on the goal of maximising vehicle availability. As a leader in the fleet management industry, we felt we were ideally placed to bring in new ways of working with the likes of Xpress Centres, while also helping to improve services with long-time partner Autoglass BodyRepair.”
