When acquiring new rolling stock, the operator is faced with a number of maintenance options. The maintenance capacities will then depend on:
– The political, social and economic context of the country;
– The urban transport model that it would like to develop;
– The financing means;
– The available qualified labour.
Maintenance contract: a service contract
The maintenance contract is a service contract by which a service provider undertakes to provide a certain number of services, e.g. using specific equipment or making repairs. The maintenance contract is similar to the servicing contract. But it also includes any work done by the maintenance company in the event of breakdowns requiring major repairs.
In the maintenance contract, the prices are usually agreed in advance (except for the price of parts). In most cases, the contract includes an annual subscription system.
In terms of IT, the maintenance contract finds a particular field of application. Indeed, given that all companies have IT systems, computer and software maintenance can be extremely important for production or for service providers that can no longer operate when the IT system is down. However, except in cases concerning data processing, copyright or website hosting, the law of the parties (i.e. the contract) alone shall apply.
Defining the suitable maintenance contract:
Once the partner company undertaking the maintenance has been identified, the contract must be defined according to a number of criteria:
– its term;
– its prerogatives: is the maintenance full or partial (e.g. drive train only) etc.?
The multiple benefits of the maintenance contract
Thanks to the maintenance contract, the company owning the buses will not have to make regular unavoidable investments in premises or new equipment, which represent genuine savings in terms of time and money that are essential for ensuring the viability of the company.
This contract is preferable for any activity that requires a high availability rate, e.g. urban equipment to be used intensely on a daily basis. Added to this is the fact that it represents a fixed cost which must be included in the calculation of the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). In this case, expenses will focus primarily on training drivers on getting started with the vehicle only.
