B
ill Griffiths’ favorite leadership quote is from Henry Ford: “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working
together is success.” Griffiths fit that mold before he became aware of the
quote, as a young diesel mechanic in the U.S. Air Force. It continues to drive him in his current position as se- nior vice president of fleet and facilities at transportation contractor Beacon Mobility. Adherence to this philosophy has served the Boston
native well over the years, and this month the National School Transportation Association honors him as the 2023 Innovator of the Year, an award in its sophomore season sponsored by School Transportation News in partnership with NSTA. “I’ve been very lucky in the 32 years I’ve been in this business to have worked with some truly awesome people,” Griffiths said. “This award is awesome, but I have a great team here and every successful leader, usually behind them, they are backstopped by an exceptional workforce. My story is no different.” He credited Margaret Davis, his VP of fleet manage-
ment, with helping him create the vision of what the organization wanted this to be. “And the innovation piece is really about us thinking, what does the next generation of technician look like? What tools do they need to help them be successful?” Griffiths added He stressed that his maintenance technicians make
his operation a team effort. “I may be their leader, but at the end of the day those
folks are getting it done,” he said. “They are great peo- ple who come to work every day, laser-focused. They understand when they are fixing a vehicle that it’s trans- porting children or adults in need, and that’s awesome. It makes my job easier as a leader, and if I give them the tools to help make them successful, they thrive in that environment.” Griffiths’ resume is extensive. He held executive fleet
roles at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), Smithsonian Institution, Montgomery County, Maryland, Fleet Management Services, and the U.S. For- est Service. In 2015, Griffiths was named National Public Fleet Manager of the Year for his work in Maryland. Griffiths was nominated for the STN Innovator of the
Year award by Beacon Mobility CEO Judith Crawford, who wrote that Griffiths has been instrumental in mov- ing company innovation forward, as evidenced by the increase in technology. “He has overseen an enterprise fleet rollout of Fleet-
Wave, a best-in-class maintenance system, DriveCam, and tablets to allow drivers to communicate,” Crawford wrote. “With FleetWave, technicians now utilize a tablet
38 School Transportation News • JULY 2023
to help streamline their workflow and simplify process- es. It will provide real-time preventive maintenance and compliance tracking and reporting. In addition, it inte- grates on board vehicle health to optimize maintenance intervals reduce breakdowns and reduce fleet cost.” Crawford mentioned Griffiths’ interest in technician
development and that he is starting Beacon’s first center of excellence. She added that Griffiths has overseen an active pilot of 10 electric vehicles in Dracut, Massachu- setts, which he showed to a visiting executive team from NSTA, “with a view to collaborating and helping to move the industry forward.” Griffiths said technology is a huge part of what they
believe sets Beacon apart in the industry, adding that the projects he has led have created the connected vehi- cle experience using telematics, cameras and tablets in vehicles so drivers can do their inspections and get routing and student information. “This rolls into the en- terprise-wide fleet system,” Griffiths said. “We’re capturing real-time data that enables us to make better data-based decisions to optimize our maintenance cycles, [and] pre- vent things from failing before they break down.” The centerpiece of the technology matrix at Beacon is
FleetWave, artificial intelligence (AI) software that brings all the other technologies together in a central location by gathering and compiling individual bus information from the telematics software, cameras and tablets for drivers and technicians. Griffiths said FleetWave leverages the diagnostic trou- ble codes captured on the telematics devices and can provide the recommended repair path. Fleetwave also analyzes historical repairs and shows trends for the types of issues that happen most frequently. Griffiths said the software also helps identify the optimum maintenance schedule for a vehicle. “It helps us become more efficient as an organization,” he said. “That is predictive mainte- nance. We have 12,000 vehicles across the country, and all the maintenance [technicians], all the organizations are using this same platform.” Getting all the technicians on the same page was a key
strategy for Griffiths when he arrived in February 2020. Considering Beacon Mobility comprises of 22 separate companies in 23 states, that was no small task. Griffiths’ team decided to observe how different tech-
nicians performed preventive maintenance on similar vehicles. “We found that it wasn’t efficient,” Griffiths said. “One guy would do it one way and another guy did it a different way, and there was no standardization.” Griffiths said that with the participation of the tech-
nicians, a standardized process was developed with a checklist. “We developed checklists for each type of vehicle that saved us 30 minutes in the inspection cycle,”
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