It’s been a while, months actually, since I’ve written about our truck committee in Haverhill Corner, NH, and a lot has happened since the last missive. We’ve talked to several manufacturers, got proposals from a few and attended a trade show as a committee to see the latest and greatest. We’ve even met with our town representatives for a preliminary presentation and they like what they’ve heard so far. Things are going well for a possible purchase in 2016, but it’s been a lot of work and there’s more ahead.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, we had a couple of missteps, largely because we invited sales reps in before we really knew what we wanted. Now, we’ve got a clear vision, what we’re calling final specs, which might not be absolutely final, but it indicates everything we want in our new pumper. As a refresher, we’re going for a new pumper with a 1,500-gallon tank and a 1,500-gpm pump on a custom cab and chassis.
Our town has an apparatus committee that’s comprised of the fire chiefs of the three departments in our community, local commissioners and a few “at-large” citizens who will ultimately pay for the apparatus.
We met with them a couple of months ago with a sketch of what we wanted and presented a very preliminary budget. In preparation for the meeting, we developed a specification, a mission of what we thought the apparatus would do for our department and, more importantly, how the apparatus would fit into the entire town’s fleet.
They were reasonable requests, especially in light of the hundreds of thousands of dollars we’re going to seek from the taxpayers. We even presented what we thought the impact on the tax rate would be if we were allocated our budget.
The committee was impressed. One of the select board members said all town equipment should be subjected to the same kind of examination and rationale-based scrutiny.
The lesson learned is be prepared. Anticipate the questions that may arise from the political segments of your community. Understand that they’re the ones who are going to face taxpayers when they ask about an increase in their tax bills, not you. You and your department are insulated from most of the politics of buying a new truck, at least from the taxpayers’ perspective.
Choosing What You Want
Buoyed by a positive reaction from the town’s apparatus purchasing committee, who actually added items to what we proposed, we decided to go to the New England Association of Fire Chiefs’ show in Springfield, MA.
Shows of all types, including Firehouse World in San Diego and Firehouse Expo, which will be in Nashville next year, are great places to learn about apparatus and actually see the products concentrated in one place. And, because the New England chiefs’ show is close, we got to meet with all of our local apparatus sales representatives.
While at the show, we saw a number of features that we wanted to include on our pumper and drafted them into the specification, which we then gave to the sales representatives. Some of them are crunching numbers now to come up with a proposal for us in the next few weeks.
Our community allows for two types of purchasing. One is the traditional bid process and the other is an equally acceptable, although not as much used, Request for Proposal (RFP). We have chosen to go with an RFP.
An RFP is a type of solicitation for goods or services where a community announces that it has funding for a particular item or program and companies can place bids for the completion of the project or the delivery of the item, in our case a pumper.
It’s been said many times that sales representatives make or break a fire truck manufacturing company. Once you get into the process of buying an apparatus, you will quickly see there are some fantastic sales reps who are there with answers and options and other reps who are difficult to even reach by email. We’ve had the same experience and it will likely affect who we choose to build our apparatus, all else being equal. When you think about it, if it’s difficult to get a representative when you’re trying to spend money with them, think about what it will be like when you’re trying to collect on a warranty claim. It’s just common sense.
Choose Wisely
We decided early on in our committee work that we were going to leave the engineering to the manufacturers. While we have very experienced truck drivers and heavy equipment operators on our committee, none of us know what it takes to make a safe pumper. We use the knowledge we have to ask questions and have an appreciation of what we’re being told.
A couple of people on our committee noticed one spec that had what they figured were undersized axles and when questioned, the manufacturer acknowledged they weren’t sufficient, but quickly pointed out that it was a conceptual sales drawing we were looking at that had not gone through final engineering for build. Still, it was good to notice it early in the process before the quote and the specifications were completed.
Lesson learned, trust but verify what your sales representatives are saying.
And even though we are moving toward final specifications, we have some representatives who are trying to convince us that we want is something different than what we’ve asked for. Advice on that is to listen to your sales representative. They’ve built more trucks than you and they may have a legitimate reason for making the suggestion, either to save money or because they believe what they’ve suggested is a better fit or solution for what you’re seeking.
On the other hand, if you and your committee are solid about a particular choice, either by brand, product loyalty or any other reasons, stick to your guns and hold fast on your specification. It’s you and your colleagues who are going to be living with the apparatus for a couple of decades, not the sales representative. Good sales reps will be with you for the long haul and will want you to be happy with your purchase and not just not there to make the sale and move on to another conquest. But make no mistake, they are there to make money, necessarily so, but it’s up to you as a committee to make sure you don’t break the bank so the dealer can make a handsome profit. Be prudent.
Next steps for us include getting the formal proposals that we can submit to the town committee for their review and recommendations. It will be building upon the relationship we established this spring. We are all members of the same town. We have the same interests, protecting the lives and property of the people live with, while being fiscally responsible.
Our town committee knows fire apparatus is not cheap, but they also know that the choices our department make affects the bottom line. We expect to have to justify what we’ve requested and we will have done our homework. We will be respectful of their questions and listen to their suggestions. It’s a matter of trust.
The intricacies of political relationships could be the topic of an entire blog. Suffice it to say that it's important to have respect for those who are the financial gatekeepers. They have jobs to do and it’s your job to help them do theirs. It’s not rocket science, or as one of my favorite fire service instructors says, “rocket surgery.” It’s a matter of mutual trust and respect.
We’ll have that second meeting with the larger town committee as soon as we get all of our proposals. Our department truck committee will have to go over the proposals first, so we can make a recommendation and be ready to justify it.
It’s plausible that not every manufacturer will make a proposal. They might see something in our specs they can’t provide or think they can be competitive. That’s fine. It’s part of the process. That’s why we talked to many, knowing we’ll only be buying one truck from one manufacturer. There will be more losers than winners in this bidding and that’s the nature of the beast. It means we get good value for a good price and the manufacturers make a reasonable profit so they can continue to be in business.
Even after we pass muster with the town apparatus purchasing committee in the next few week, we have to go through the budget committee’s review and select board review. From there, we anticipate presenting something to our residents at town meeting in March 2016, where a final financial decision will be made.
The road is long, but preparation, honesty and respect will take us to where we need to be and with the apparatus we need for decades to come.
