IRTE column Feb 2010 issue 03 February 2010

The uninitiated in our industry regard best practice guides as gospel, because they have been published by a government-supported body. However, the view of more experienced transport engineers is that you can never arrive at best practice, because there is always a new management system or technological advance bound to take you beyond the original targets.

For example, maintenance planning is best done on a spreadsheet, we're told. But if the information remains in a computer and people forget to print it out and put it on the wall, it is effectively lost. Although the planning may have been best practice, expediting maintenance without sharing information is certainly not.

Similarly, where technicians use web-based inspection reporting, it is only useful if managers at the operator's office read it. Equally, it is of little use when a dealer supplying such a report doesn't put it on the system until the end of the week.

The operator is obliged to know the outcome of an inspection – is the truck safe or not – before he can put it back into use. how can that work for a truck that goes in for inspection on Sunday at midnight, and is then inspected at 5.00am, before going back on the road for operations long before the inspection report enters the system?

Putting these documents online and available to see could be defined as best practice – but it could be quite the opposite. There is no defence mechanism, because your inspection report was your defence mechanism.

Another point: as an operator, you are required to show that someone competent has inspected your vehicle – and realistically that means relying on the expertise of your contractor. But if you receive a report later that tells you "Cut tyre: Report" who do you report to? Where it reads "Oil leak: Report", how severe is the oil leak? Is it possible that by the time you get that report off the system on Friday, your driver has already seized an engine?

More important than supposed best practice, fleet engineers need to make sure that their systems suit their operation. If you work with faxed information then you need a system that involves someone at your contractor's office printing off the job sheet as soon as a truck inspection is complete and faxing it to your traffic office – where someone then reads it and confirms issues that need addressing or defects outstanding. When the repair action is agreed by all parties, and everything is signed off, only then should you put the vehicle back to use.

A procedure is only best practice if you pick out the best parts out of it and it fit them with your operation.

Author
IRTE

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