Vans arriving, chargers not
A fleet customer is moving their depot vans to electric in phases. The first batch of vehicles arrives earlier than planned because the leasing company found stock. Your second install phase is waiting on a capacity upgrade the customer's facilities team is handling, and a budget sign-off on their side. The fleet manager emails asking why twelve new vans have nowhere to charge, and your project manager replies that nobody told them the vans were early.
Two plans, never compared
A fleet electrification is a joint project. The fleet manager plans vehicles, drivers and routes. Facilities handle the building and power supply. Finance approves each phase. You plan survey, design, install and commissioning. Each side has its own spreadsheet and meets monthly, if that. Changes on one side reach the other by chance.
- Vehicle delivery dates change and nobody tells the installer.
- Capacity milestones sit with the customer's facilities team.
- Budget approvals for later phases are unclear.
- Charger allocation per bay and vehicle type is decided late.
- Progress reports are written by hand before each meeting.
The cost of drift
Vehicles sit without charging, which damages the fleet manager's case internally and your relationship with them. Crews are booked for phases that cannot start. Chargers are ordered early and sit in the warehouse, or late and hold up the phase. And the monthly meeting is spent reconciling spreadsheets instead of making decisions.
Fleet customers also report upwards. The fleet manager has to explain to their own finance and operations directors why vehicles are not yet charging at the depot, and if your plan and theirs disagree, you are the easiest party to blame.
The rollout tracker we build
- The project is set up as phases, each with chargers and bays, the vehicles they serve, dependencies (capacity milestones, approvals, permits) and your install stages.
- The fleet manager and facilities contact get their own login to update vehicle dates and their milestones. You update install stages.
- When a vehicle date or milestone changes, the tracker shows which phases are affected and alerts both sides.
- Charger orders for each phase are linked to its dates, so procurement follows the plan rather than guesses.
- Each phase shows readiness: approved, capacity in place, chargers on order, crews booked, installed, commissioned, live on the back office.
- A progress report is produced for each meeting from the live data, showing changes since the last one.
| Plan item | Held separately now | Held in the shared tracker |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicle arrivals | Fleet manager's spreadsheet | Updated by the fleet manager |
| Power capacity work | Facilities team | Milestones with dates |
| Budget approvals | Finance emails | Recorded per phase |
| Install phases | Your project plan | Linked to all of the above |
| Meeting report | Written by hand | Generated from live data |
Capacity design and load management choices remain with your engineers and the customer's advisers. The tracker holds the dates and dependencies they agree.
A rollout both sides trust
Both sides work from one plan. A vehicle change shows up the same day as an effect on your phases, not at the next meeting. Chargers arrive when needed. Meetings focus on decisions. And when the fleet manager reports up their own organisation, they use the same numbers you do.
Later phases also benefit from the record of earlier ones: how long approvals actually took, which dependencies caused delay and how the vehicle schedule moved. That history makes the next phase's plan more honest.
Does your depot rollout look like this?
- Vehicles have arrived before their chargers.
- You learn about fleet changes at monthly meetings.
- Chargers have been ordered too early or too late for a phase.
- Customer approvals for later phases are unclear.
- Progress reports take hours to put together.