Iain Fortune, Fleet Operations and Transport Compliance Manager at South Gloucestershire Council, on duty-cycle planning, the infrastructure challenge, and where local authority fleet managers are leaving the biggest savings on the table.
For Iain Fortune the path to a greener fleet is built not on ambition alone, but on hard data and hard-headed realism. With responsibility for a mixed fleet spanning PCV and HGV operations, Fortune has developed an approach that balances long-term decarbonisation goals with the day-to-day demands of keeping public services moving.
A duty-cycle approach
‘Going green cannot be completed all at once,’ Fortune is clear. Rather than pursuing a wholesale transition, South Gloucestershire’s transport team has adopted a duty-cycle methodology, drawing on years of operational data to match vehicle type to actual usage patterns while maximising total cost of ownership (TCO). It is a pragmatic framework that acknowledges the realities of running a public sector fleet and one that Fortune believes more councils should adopt.
Charging infrastructure, he argues, remains one of the most significant blockers to progress. ‘11kWh chargers are significantly cheaper to install and provide overnight charging where 150kW rapid chargers are not strictly necessary with council shift patterns.’ For the light vehicle fleet, this approach has worked well. For heavier vehicles, however, the constraints are more acute and the solutions more expensive.
South Gloucestershire is currently weighing a significant decision: invest in upgrading a 40-year-old depot infrastructure or repurpose the site for housing and relocate transport to a purpose-built, future-proofed facility. Fortune estimates the scoping exercise alone will take around two years. It is the kind of long-range strategic thinking that fleet managers are increasingly having to undertake, even as they keep services running.
Infrastructure before vehicles
When it comes to sustainable fleet transition on a limited capital budget, Fortune’s philosophy is straightforward: infrastructure first. ‘Being gentle on the current grid capacity, knowing the limitations,’ is how he describes it — a managed approach to balancing power loads and protecting ageing substations from being overwhelmed.
Where electrification simply isn’t yet practical, Fortune has turned to alternative fuels. HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil) and GTL (gas-to-liquid) provide a viable bridging solution for ICE vehicles that cannot yet be replaced, offering meaningful emissions reductions without requiring new infrastructure investment.
Technology, training and avoiding change fatigue
As fleets become more technologically complex, driver safety and compliance present their own challenges. Fortune’s answer is to use modern vehicle technology – particularly advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) – as a tool rather than a burden. Dedicated familiarisation training focuses on using technology to combat fatigue, while a considered approach to procurement helps avoid overwhelming drivers with constant change.
‘Keeping to minimal manufacturer variations with similar operational functions,’ is Fortune’s guiding principle – a small but telling detail that reflects his broader philosophy of managing transition carefully, not just quickly.
Data: essential but siloed
Data sits at the heart of Fortune’s operation. From building the business case for capital investment to managing fleet size through utilisation analysis, telematics has become indispensable, particularly in matching battery range to actual route requirements for electric vehicles. The biggest barrier, he says, is not the data itself but the cost of integrating it: ‘Data is in many database silos,’ and unlocking its full potential requires investment that not every council can readily make.
The untapped opportunities
Fortune is direct about where he sees the greatest unrealised potential for local authority fleet managers. Grey fleet – employees using personal vehicles for council business – represents an unmonitored source of high emissions and significant mileage costs. A centrally managed, low-emission car pool scheme, he argues, could deliver dramatic savings.
Beyond that, he points to route optimisation across departments, and cross-departmental asset sharing as two further opportunities that many councils have yet to fully exploit. ‘The greenest mile is the one you never drive,’ as he puts it – a principle that applies as much to waste services as it does to social care and highways.
Taken together, Fortune’s approach offers a practical blueprint for any local authority fleet manager trying to reconcile the pressure to decarbonise with the reality of delivering services on constrained budgets. It is not a story of dramatic transformation overnight, but of steady, data-led progress and in local government fleet management, that may be exactly what sustainable change looks like.
Photo: Iain Fortune is Fleet Operations and Transport Compliance Manager at South Gloucestershire Council © Iain Fortune
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