Keeping Your Transport Contracts on the Right Track: Key Considerations Before Renewal

Many schools simply accept their transport supplier’s annual price increase without question – but this doesn’t have to be the case. In this blog, I will cover the key questions to ensure your transport requirement is met accurately and competitively priced. Furthermore, I will consider strategies to ensure long term cost control.

Over the last few years, there have been considerable price hikes within the bus and coach industry, mainly led by increased fuel prices, insurance premiums and driver wages; therefore, making it important to reassess and ensure you are getting the best value for money.

The first important question that you need to ask is whether your current provision is ‘correct’. Just because you have run 7 bus routes for the last 5 years, it does not mean that you need to keep the same 7 routes for the next 5 years. Utilisation is a key indicator of a school bus operation’s success, and this number should be calculated on both a route-by-route basis, and across the network overall. Using this figure, you can start to calculate your average load per vehicle to ensure that you are receiving appropriately sized vehicle and, if needed, request smaller vehicles, larger vehicles, or change the composition of your current network.

The next key message is to assess your overall bus requirements across the entire school, rather than treating ‘home-to-school’ transport and ‘trips and fixtures’ as separate needs. In many cases, there is an opportunity to use this bulk purchasing power as a negotiation measure by bundling your requirement into one full package. Not only does this work from a practical standpoint of the coach being onsite but also allows you to build and expand on existing relationships with suppliers.

Thirdly, most operators will be keen to establish longer-term contracts, and this presents a highly beneficial opportunity to schools. Engaging with extended contracts not only provides financial certainty but can create a stronger working relationship between the two parties. The key term that can be added into such contracts is a limit on year-on-year price increases, helping to schools to manage budgetary expectations. Furthermore, long term commitments create confidence in the arrangement and give operators the insurance to plan and invest in their own businesses strategically. This often translates into direct benefits to schools through upgraded, more efficiently and environmentally friendly vehicles. Beyond the obvious benefits of reliability and overall quality, newer vehicles can help schools to achieve and work towards sustainability objectives. I often find that operators tend to be more responsive to feedback and more effective at dealing with parental complaints due to their longer term invested interest in the service.

In a world where costs are being scrutinised, it is important to ensure you have an understanding on where the market currently sits. Many schools have longstanding existing relationship with bus operators, meaning it can be difficult to conduct price benchmarking, but it is an extremely valuable exercise. Whether it is conducted with the intention of changing provider or for educational purposes, it is worth reaching out to local suppliers to see if they might be able to help.

My final message it to start this conversation early. At this time of year, coach operators will be keen to engage to start booking their runs in for the next academic year, and there is no better time to reach out. As the year goes on, availability will reduce and there will be less opportunity for operators to juggle their fleet.