FLEETDRIVE
AfMA
catches up with Andrew Levingston, Program Leader - Plant Fleet,
Workshops & Depots at the Armidale Regional Council
Daniel: So you’ve been with Armidale
for quite a while. What are the ongoing
challenges that you’ve been working
through recently?
Andrew: I guess the current change or challenge
that we’re working through is what our council is
calling our transformation program. It’s all about
looking at how council currently undertakes its
business and identifying some key projects for
the future, particularly between now and 2022.
D: And how have you gone about those
changes?
A: When we began our review of the business we
basically created different working groups to start
reviewing our business. Our general approach
is to understand the scope, design and scale of
the project and how that might link with other
businesses within the council. That’s essentially
where we are at the moment.
D: Do you feel like that has that worked
so far?
A: In the last sort of 6-12 months we’ve looked
at how we can work more closely alongside
other local government businesses. We’re
working with consultants as far as looking at
opportunities to commercialise the business and
to put a business model out to other potential
businesses which is exciting. And then once
we get a couple of options we’ll do some other
marketing to find some other shareholders that
can take the business forward.
D: Do you feel like your role over time has
changed? What have you noticed over the
years?
A: I think as a fleet manager it’s changed quite a
bit. I think there’s a lot more diversity now across
management in that we need to be across a lot
more legislation. You also need to have medium
to high level IT skills especially in Excel to process
a lot of different information and to do overall
business modelling. I think that that’s different to
how it used to be – today it’s all about embracing
technology to build efficiencies and having that
integration working across new technology.
Moving forward the job is very different to even
how it was two years ago.
D: You’ve spoken a little bit about the need
for constant upskilling and retraining for a
changing industry. Is that part of the reason
you decided to complete the Graduate
Diploma of Leadership and Management?
What was that like?
A: I really enjoyed it. There was a captive
audience in our Sydney group and that was
very good to have that face to face time, even
in terms of just generally networking. The thing
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