INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS
SHARING IS CARING SOUTH CAROLINA ADOPTS NORTH CAROLINA’S SCHOOL BUS SPECIFICATION, WHICH INCLUDES FOR THE FIRST TIME A/C SYSTEMS
WRITTEN BY SYLVIA ARROYO Days after Christmas, the South Carolina
Department of Education received its first delivery of brand-new type C conventional special needs school buses, making this the state’s first new purchase since 2008. Before the arrival of the 342 new Tomas Built buses, the state owned and operated close to 6,000 school buses for school dis- tricts. State law requires buses to be replaced at least every 12 years, if budget dollars are available. South Carolina is the only state that operates all of its school buses directly. Te purchase produced a few milestones.
First, instead of creating a new school bus specification from scratch, South Carolina adopted North Carolina’s school bus spec word-for-word. Te only change was any school bus lettering and ID markings. Secondly, the adopted spec includes A/C
systems, something the South Carolina fleet didn’t have before. “Te one big change was air condi-
tioning,” said Mike Bullman, director of maintenance at the South Carolina DOE. “We purchased 342 buses all equipped with A/C with the adopted spec.” Not only did adopting a neighboring
state’s spec helped shorten South Caroli- na’s procurement process, it also signals a movement by the industry to standardize specing school buses to drive down costs for manufacturers and school transportation departments when it comes to maintenance and parts inventory. Tis standardization movement was dis- cussed at the National Association for Pupil Transportation’s annual Summit conference last October in Memphis, Tenn. Also linked
with this movement is NAPT’s newly formed ad hoc fleet services advisory panel. It aims to create professional development for fleet managers, a group of people the industry has not focused on, yet can provide valuable insight to help standardize school buses, said Marshall Casey, Bullman’s predecessor and one of the five advisory panel members. Te ultimate goal with this effort is to
drive down costs through the use of Key Per- formance Indicators, or KPIs, a set of metrics that the industry also wants to standardize. “We adopted [the spec] really to try to
streamline our operations, and for cost sav- ings,” Bullman said. He added that even if more states follow in South Carolina’s foot- steps, there will be subtle differences among school buses, but “for the most part this will get buses much closer to a standard.”
See Us At Booth # 410 24 School Transportation News February 2013
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