Case Study: City of Enumclaw Uses EFI to Achieve Accurate Records, PM
About City of Enumclaw
Enumclaw is located in King County, Wash. It’s less than an hour away from Seattle and Tacoma, and is near Mount Rainier National Park, the Chinook Pass Scenic Byway, the South Cascade Loop and Crystal Mountain Resort.
The city offers various services, including public works, utilities, engineering, street system operations and maintenance. The fleet services team maintains the city-owned vehicles.
Entered Fuel Records Manually for Vehicles
Needing to account for fuel usage and mileage for all city-owned vehicles, the City of Enumclaw entered odometer and fuel information for each vehicle into the RTA Fleet Management Software system manually. Their existing process was too time consuming to do after each fuel transaction – taking several hours each time – so the data was entered just once a month. The staff member tasked with entering the mileage and fuel information used the most recent fuel record to enter the updated mileage for each vehicle, and then took an average for the entire month to determine the fuel usage and costs.
Process Resulted in Financial Errors, Missed Preventative Maintenance
Manually entering the odometer and fuel information was resulting in errors. There were data-entry mistakes and taking the average price and fuel usage wasn’t giving exact information. This caused the estimated fuel costs to be off by hundreds of dollars each month. It also caused vehicles to fall behind in preventative maintenance as the odometer information was only updated monthly.
Began Using Electronic Fuel Interface (EFI)
To solve the problem, the City of Enumclaw started using RTA’s Electronic Fuel Interface (EFI) tool. This allowed the information to be loaded into the RTA platform automatically from the fuel systems – removing the risk of human error. The city saw immediate benefits. After implementing EFI in June 2018, Enumclaw was able to reconcile July and August “down to the penny.” In addition to being more accurate than entering the data manually, using EFI also saved time, making it easy to pull reports more frequently. Instead of waiting until the end of the month to enter the data, the city now loads the data every week.
“It takes all of 5 minutes.”
— Dianna Billingsley, City of Enumclaw Public Works Administrative Manager
“It takes all of 5 minutes,” Dianna Billingsley, the City of Enumclaw Public Works Administrative Manager, said.
Using the EFI also allowed the technicians to have better insight into when vehicles are due for preventative maintenance. Now, Billingsley said the mechanics “love it,” as they can pre-schedule PM based on up-to-date odometer readings. With EFI, the shop is running smoother and more efficiently.