Area General Manager

First for a reason:

At First Student, we are a family of 60,000+ employees who take pride in safely transporting more than 5 million students and passengers to and from their destinations each day! Our family of brands include Transco, Total Transportation, Maggies Paratransit, and GVC II. Our employees are at the forefront of safety and innovation; they create and implement the most advanced training and technology the transportation industry has to offer.

About the Position

Provides operational oversight, day-to-day management, customer interface, and required reporting and compliance mandates (both internal and external) for a specific area within a region. Represents company management with school officials concerning issues of passenger management, route scheduling, billing, charter activities, driver issues, safety, fleet maintenance and general logistics matters. Directly supervises exempt and non-exempt staff and manages financial performance. Position has full supervisory responsibility for recruitment, hiring, retention, performance development, performance management, teammate relations, salary adjustments, and termination of direct reports. Responsible for on-line learning courses and completion of courses individually and for the locations within their area. Will coach and develop employees in their area to support company initiatives and location/area/region goals. Identifies issues related to resources needs (driver shortage) for the area/locations needs and customer requirements. Responsible for stimulating local commercial and/or charter growth. Manages the development, preparation and analysis of area/location budget and financial controls. Accountable for the development and implementation of processes which support lean practices and standardization across area/locations.
Responsibilities:

• Ensures the safe and timely transportation of passengers to and from their destinations. Manages operational expenses to optimize all cost per bus. Manage all contractual services to include administrative functions, information systems, parts purchasing, and inventory control. Ensures purchases (including parts) follow company processes and policies.
• Responsible for overall cost structure and pricing for locations within area.
• Lead the Location’s within specific area in managing the day-to-day activities to support operations, safety, maintenance, dispatch, fleet and facility management, payroll, routing/scheduling, AR/AP and other interrelated functions. Foster and maintain positive relationships within and outside of their area, including senior management and customer contacts.
• Leads and oversees all aspects of customer contract compliance and management with a concentrated focus on retaining the customer in conjunction with the local management team. Includes adherence to all staff, driver, and vehicles requirements, as well as KPI, billing and budget management. Also, covers delivery of all contract-specific technologies and other requirements. Ensures delivery of training and other needs as per company, location, state and customer requirements.
• Builds positive relationships with employees, local school officials, parents and the community. Resolves concerns with employees, local school officials, parents, and the community. Implements fair and consistent recognition and/or corrective discipline. Responsible to drive employee engagement, community engagement, culture and growth for First Student but more specifically to the locations within area.
• Communicates with customer by telephone, electronically or in regular face-to-face meetings. Responds promptly to customer inquiries, identifies and escalates priority issues, obtains and evaluates all relevant information to resolve inquiries and complaints. Follow-ups with customers as required. Develops action plans to ensure customer retention. Provides and promotes effective communication with customer and escalates issues if needed to SVP and/or RVP or other Senior Management.
• Ensure services are provided within budget and action plans developed and implemented to improve operational efficiencies. Manages area/location budget through but not limited to: development, preparing and analyzing of the budget and forecast. Ensures any budget variances are identified and can be addressed. Provides accurate timely operational and financial reporting as requested by RVP/AGM and/or finance.
• Leads by example. Builds and maintains a strong positive Area/Location teams through effective recruiting, on-boarding, training, coaching, team building and succession planning. Prepare and participate in the preparation of staff development plans for each functional employee who is a member of the Area/Location team. Assess the skills and skill levels necessary to achieve Location objectives. Ensures all on-line learni