We constantly strive to be excellent in all that we do.
As part of our commitment to excellence and to continuously increase our value offering to our customers and employees, we have a dedicated organization focused on driving efficiencies throughout our organization, embedding best practices and sustaining a culture of innovation. Our management operating system incorporates lean and six sigma methodologies to constantly identify and eliminate barriers to performance excellence and empower our employees to provide the best in class service to our customers.
Maintenance technicians are a critical part of our mission to getting children to school safely, on time and ready to learn®. Providing safe student transportation starts with putting safe vehicles on the road. To foster excellence in its maintenance operations, we support our maintenance professionals who work to achieve master technician certification by the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE), an independent, non-profit organization that works to improve the quality of vehicle repair and service by testing and certifying repair and service professionals. In 2014, our company launched a concerted effort to encourage mechanics to obtain their master technician certificates. Due to that effort, 25 employees are ASE certified as master technicians, and more than 65 employees are currently progressing through various stages of the program.
Our Everett, Washington maintenance team became master certified by ASE’s blue seal of excellence recognition program in August 2016. The testing involved the completion of the following seven areas:
National Express LLC was selected for this award based on our demonstrated commitment to excellence and our pursuit of continuous improvement. This recognition 
is especially meaningful as organizations can take many years to achieve this honor. In the beginning of November 2015, a team of assessors spent an entire week in our corporate headquarters in Warrenville and also visited our Aurora, Lake Villa and Carpentersville customer service centers, speaking to over 100 team members. During the visit, the assessing team dug into the details of our business and assessed the extent to which we demonstrate excellence; our business was assessed using the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for excellence.
The ILPEx assessment was a review of our organization’s continuous improvement efforts. This recognition not only confirms our improvement from 2011 to 2016 but validates the journey to excellence that we continue to travel.
