H.E Mohammed Abdullah Al-Jarman has been the head of Emirates Transport and Services Corporation (Emirates Transport) as the Director General since 2007. He is one of the most prominent Emirati leaders with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and more than 30 years of expertise in the field of institutional financial and investment work and institutional leadership, in addition to being the chairman of the boards of a number of companies affiliated to the Corporation.
H.E Al-Jarman also took the lead during the corporation’s quality transition from a service to an investment based institution that is equipped with a coherent business system and various activities and services.
“Our main strategic goal for the next five years is to maintain our position as market leaders by focusing on efficiency, and quality and to sustain growth by targeting new investment opportunities in the provision of transportation management services. We will also work towards developing business and key activities, and directing them towards automation and transport technology, and of course, promoting innovation and building new capabilities,” said H.E Al- Jarman.
Emirates Transport provides a number of integrated services in the transport, leasing and technical services sectors through 8 main services, 26 sub-services, and over 30,000 vehicles at its disposal. The customer base includes a number of active clients in the public and private sectors represented by a number of ministries, as well as various private sector companies and institutions.
Under the management of H.E Al-Jarman, Emirates Transport has stroke an optimal balance between the investment side and the requirements of governance, quality, safety, audit management, risk, and social responsibility, development of its policies and systems, and enhancement of the culture of commitment. Emirates Transport currently boasts more than 25,000 male and female employees, and the largest specialised fleet with a mixed brand of vehicles of more than 30,000 vehicles.
Leaders in School Transport & Safety
One of Emirates Transport primary services is school transportation and they currently take an unprecedented lead as market leaders in the industry. The Corporation are currently exclusive operators when it comes to school transportation for government schools with 5,093 buses transporting 218,800 students to 641 schools and is the only trusted school transport operator by the federal government as well as department of education and knowledge in Abu Dhabi. In the private sector there are 914 buses operating and transporting 28,398 students to 72 schools, further solidifying Emirates Transport as absolute market leaders in the Middle East. On top of that Emirates Transport take an exceptional lead in ensuring safety for students who travel on these buses.
“The provision of this service centers on the importance of school transport, which is considered an influential element in the system of mass transport in the state, and the need to provide a comprehensive service to include not only the regular daily transport for public schools, but also transport for school trips and for the use of summer and evening youth centres,” added H.E Al- Jarman
In 2018, Emirates Transport revealed their quarterly traffic accident record for its fleet of vehicles, including school transport, showed a decrease in accident rates during the second quarter of this year, compared to the first quarter with a reduction of 80% in the overall number of medium level accidents recorded in its fleet, and a decrease of 50% in the category of serious accidents, compared to the first quarter of the same year.
This continuous reduction is due to the rigorous safety training that Emirates Transport conducts for its drivers at its training center. Its training center in coordination with the school transport division has trained 31,941 trainees, of which 21,686 are drivers and 10,255 are female supervisors, in various specialized training programs including evacuation procedures and the use of emergency doors in school buses, first aid, fire extinguishing, awareness training programs on traffic safety, buses technical safety and how to deal with preventive maintenance systems and cases of sudden breakdowns on buses.
Apart from training its staff, Emirates Transport formed a partnership with Abu Dhabi Education Council to launch ‘Hafilati’, an app that enables parents to track their children to and from school, as part of their efforts to enhance safety in school buses.
“Through this step the corporation seeks to contribute to the country’s goal of developing its education systems and reflects the directives of the wise leadership to prioritise the overall safety of students, especially in school buses,” said H.E Al-Jarman.
Digital Transformation
Emirates Transport initiated a new “Unified Tracking System”, which is the largest in the region. The unified tracking system is considered a fundamental component of the “Fleet Management Solution” which will provide advanced analytics capabilities which include better quality, cost savings and uninterrupted customer service through better asset planning and utilization, also the solution will enable Emirates Transport to do predictive analytics. This can all been tracked and operated by Emirates Transports own high tech control room.
This resulted in Emirates Transport forming a strategic partnership with Etisalat Digital to provide smart tracking services to 20,000 vehicles.
In the spirit of moving into a more digital-based platform, the corporation implemented ‘Oracle Cloud Applications’ to drive a major digital transformation across all its core business operations. The initiative will help Emirates Transport introduce innovative offerings that create new revenue streams, deliver exceptional customer service and drive operational efficiency.
Emirates Transport also introduced “Robotics Process Automation” (RPA) for a number of its services including vehicle rentals and driver training courses. The system is detailed and immediate, as it is able to automate a wide range of operations in the main functions on a 24-hours, seven days a week basis.
At its customer service automotive centers, Emirates Transport is now upgrading their facilities to develop and modernize all its auto services centers, to achieve the highest levels of customer happiness. This is already happening at two of its centers in Juwaize’e, Sharjah and Mezyad, Al Ain, reflecting the corporation’s growing presence in a dynamic sector. The new multi-building facility includes a customer service and reception building, as well as an auto maintenance workshop that comprises 12 services lanes processing up to 50 vehicles daily. In addition to this, a plan has been implemented to expand the customer service centers by opening six new sites in the country, including auto inspection centers in Al Ain areas of Al Hair and Al Quwa’a. The construction work is expected to be completed before the end of 2018
Growth
H.E Al-Jarman has been able to achieve a remarkable and steady transformation in Emirates Transport due to his successful management of strategic and digital transition processes, restructuring projects and cost management to ensure continued growth in the Corporation’s financial results over the coming years, in line with its new strategic plan for 2018-2022.
This year alone Emirates Transport have signed major contracts in its bid to increase and expand its services in the United Arab Emirates. For H.E Al-Jarman, this has always been the plan to expand services through business centers, to contribute significantly to the development of a group of subsidiaries and through the alliance with an elite of government and private sector agencies and institutions in the country and beyond.
“Emirates Transport is a support services provider. Our main goal is to assist our partners in mobilisation and transportation, thereby allowing them to focus on their core business.
In this way, our business too has grown by 30 per cent in the number of service requests, and 23 per cent in the value of those service requests. This is a genuine indicator of the excellent standard of services provided and the amount of business generated across the UAE,” explains H.E Al Jarman.
Sustainability
Emirates Transport currently has a fleet of 10,251 large, medium and small buses, including 5,765 school buses. With such a large fleet H.E Al- Jarman was quick to point out that Emirates Transport is an evolving business and has adapted to using new technology in order to be environmentally friendly and sustainable.
“In 2017, the Corporation placed more emphasis on such projects by resuming pre-existing initiatives rather than launching new ones, such as the conversion of diesel buses into hybrid vehicles, and testing the first electric school bus at a regional level. Emirates Transport, in cooperation with ADNOC, converted 8,096 vehicles into hybrids, in addition to providing maintenance services for 2,340 vehicles that had been previously converted.”
“This project has several benefits from both the environmental and investment perspective. For example, it reduced fuel costs overall by 25 per cent, thereby reducing carbon emissions,” added H.E Al-Jarman.
On the sustainability front, Emirates Transport stepped up its efforts with the final phase of field tests for the first electric school bus in the region in 2017. The bus accommodates 45 students and has zero emissions, whereas similar traditional diesel or petrol powered buses consume 0.347 liters per km with corresponding numbers in emissions.
Emirates Transport conducted carbon footprint measurements in 2017, in cooperation with the Dubai Carbon Centre of Excellence, revealed that their carbon footprint continued to decline, particularly in comparison to its recent, ongoing growth in revenue, as well as in the size of its fleet, which accounts for 97 per cent of the Corporation’s carbon footprint.
This initiative led Emirates Transport to received recognition in two categories during the 11th Arabia Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Awards 2018.
“In a sincere effort to provide effective infrastructure for bus operations, two integrated electric charging stations have been established and equipped to serve these buses. It is worth mentioning that bus batteries can be fully charged within four hours, and are sufficient for travel up to a distance of 100 km within extreme operating conditions, including running air conditioners and all other electronic devices.”
H.E Al Jarman ascribes great importance to the launch and support of environmentally friendly projects such as CNG Vehicle Conversion Centre, the Tyre Retreading unit, the Dry Car Wash Unit, the rental of environmentally friendly cars and the expansion of green building systems.
Forefront of CSR
Emirates Transport has developed a comprehensive corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme, which includes a wide range of activities and initiatives in various areas of social responsibility, placing it amongst the leading corporate institutions as a result of its remarkable success in integrating investment objectives with social and environmental commitments.
“Our initiatives hope to reflect the Emirates Green Development Strategy, which is aimed at achieving a more sustainable economic development. We believe in preserving the environment for future generations through the adoption of responsible business activities and practices, in close cooperation with federal and local government agencies, and partners in the private and civil sector. Ironically, our CSR strategy started with one singular founding initiative – the noble task of providing transport services to government schools,” remarked H.E Al-Jarman.
In the Year of Zayed, the corporation added 18 more initiatives in addition to the 22 ongoing CSR initiatives, which were implemented through various departments and branches across the UAE, in cooperation with different community parties. Two of these initiatives, ‘Support a Colleague’ and ‘Umrah Trips for Employees’, have been awarded the Innovation category in the field of volunteerism and humanitarian work in the sixth edition of the UAE Ideas Conference.
These initiatives have helped Emirates Transport win numerous awards for its CSR initiatives. These include the RAKEZ Business Excellence Awards for the category of ‘Best Practices of Corporate Responsibility’.
Future Challenges
The transport industry has a few challenges ahead of them with a growing demand, increasing transportation rates, and driver shortages, increased the pressure of environmental impacts, enhanced safety, stricter driver regulations and many more.
These challenges do not deter H.E Al-Jarman as he believes continuous innovation and improvement can help Emirates Transport get past the obstacles ahead of them: “In terms of the future, one of the main areas of focus for us is innovation and shaping the future. This value is about committing to providing an environment that encourages creativity and innovation, and constantly seeks to adopt the latest processes, innovative services and management practices that address the customers’ needs, whilst simultaneously responding to their expectations.”
Oil prices too have been a major difficulty for the transportation industry. According to OPEC, the average oil price in 2018 is $71.2 compared to the previous year of $52.5. This has increased operational costs and forced transportation companies to find alternative forms of energy to alleviate the pressure.
H.E Al-Jarman said: “Emirates Transport is working with its allies and providing them with all the support needed, taking into consideration all aspects of environmental and economic needs. We have already started including hybrid/electric vehicles into our fleet, and supplied fully electric cars to the ministries. Furthermore, our recently announced fully electric school bus will also help to make a massive dent in emissions overall.”
The positive leadership of H.E Al-Jarman, advocated by long years of management experience and substantial leadership visions, has contributed to the achievement of numerous government and private awards in return for Emirates Transport remarkable projects and initiatives. As a result of this H.E Al-Jarman in turn has received a number of awards including the “Golden Order of Merit Awards” in the category of “Wise Leadership in the Arab World” 2014, from Tatweej Academy for Excellence Award in the Arab Region, and the Middle East Business Leaders Award (MEBSLA) in the category of public service transformation 2015 from the American Leadership Development Association (ALDA), and the “Asia Pacific Entrepreneur Award in the UAE” for 2016, and the “Arab Eagle Award for Excellence Management in the Arab region” for 2017.