Partnering to transform Ground Support Equipment

Qantas, Australia’s national airline, is a conglomerate of iconic and respected brands across a number of business units

Whilst Qantas operates state of the art aircraft and facilities, it was increasingly reliant on an aging fleet of ground support equipment (GSE) and a large number of workshops and suppliers with increasing and unpredictable costs. The Qantas and GSE business units were also not operating collaboratively, which called for a $2billion cost reduction initiative. In September 2016, Qantas signed a seven year contract with Babcock to undertake GSE fleet management.

The challenge

• Implementation of a centralised, nation-wide GSE asset management system, to be undertaken through a low risk, phased transition on a rolling ‘port by port’ basis.
• Fleet rationalisation and centralisation across all Qantas group sites and business units
• Identify and achieve cost savings across the operations

The solution

Babcock modified and implemented its ALCAMiE™ solution using hand held tablets to provide a single source of information across all Qantas sites and divisions. Repairs and maintenance were entered directly on to an electronic job card system, significantly reducing administration and providing live data on equipment status. Mobile Maintenance Units were introduced to provide over 85% breakdown repair on the ramp.

Babcock took control of the GSE supply chain procuring spare parts and services to support the GSE repair and maintenance activities, which is undertaken by Qantas staff at the five (5) major hubs and Babcock subcontractors at the regional ports (50+ locations).

The outcome

Babcock was able to identify 30% gross savings and 22% net of incremental management costs, deliver 90% of equipment availability targets whilst also improving reliability. The supply chain has also been rationalised by 60%, realising further savings through national procurement deals and further leveraging Babcock’s global purchasing power. Our utilisation review enabled improved fleet balance and enabled surge demand to be met more easily. Babcock has identified opportunities for further efficiencies and will realise more savings and higher availability across all GSE locations as part of a wider transformation. Babcock was able to advance the operative date by 5 months at the customer’s request to enable early savings to be achieved, demonstrating Babcock’s agility and responsiveness to meet customer requirements.