Summary
Transaid was recently requested to assist in the delivery of a Maintenance Management Course delivered by the Industrial Training Centre Trust in Lusaka, Zambia. The course which was delivered over a 5 day period from 14th – 18th April, was intended to give the trainees a detailed insight as to the essential components of a Managed Maintenance system. The trainees included delegates from the Zambian Health and Communications Trust, Celtel - the mobile phone network company Celtel with a fleet of over 300 vehicles - and the Kafue Gorge Regional Training Centre which delivers hydro-electric and water turbine maintenance courses.
Transaid, with over 15 years of experience in the field of Transport Management Systems was well positioned to assist and held two sessions entitled “Vehicle Replacement Policies - The Need to Understand Economic Point of Replacement Theory” and “Maintenance Management as a Component of a Comprehensive Transport Management System”. The trainees were given working examples of Transport Management theory and challenged to understand the direct and indirect costs of transport calculated on a per km scale.
All of the participants responding positively to the training and commented that the financial side of Transport Management was something that they had not previously been exposed to but that they now understood how difficult it had been to make decisions without even the most basic financial data at hand and one eager participant commented “With this new knowledge I am excited about getting back to my desk an calculating precisely how much it is costing to run our fleet”.
Gary Forster, Lusaka, Zambia
