If your business engages the services of heavy vehicle operators to transport your goods, you may be under the false impression that you share the responsibility for how that business manages their safety and compliance.
But you don’t and you can’t. A business cannot be responsible for how another business chooses to operate.
You can only be responsible for the decisions you make around who you choose to partner with.
That said, there are many reasons why you want to partner with transport providers who:
- Have a thorough recruitment process for drivers to ensure they are licenced, competent and fit to drive.
- Manage driver fatigue and fitness to drive on a daily basis
- Maintain their vehicles and have auditable systems for pre-trip inspections, fault reporting, planned and unplanned maintenance.
- Understand the loading requirements and loading performance standards of the National Regulations and have systems in place and training for their drivers.
- Use technology as a key part of their safety and compliance program.
But this isn’t just about the prescriptive requirements – it’s about recognising transport activities that can impact each business and regular communication and reporting. At the end the day, this business will be transporting yours or your customers goods. You want them to always get from A to B without any issues. No accidents, no breakdowns, no damages or delays. You need trust and reliability.
So before engaging the transport provider, you make enquiries about their operations and you may even seek some examples to verify they do what they say they do.
The prequalification questions should be finding out the things that are important to you and your business needs. You don’t need to become a heavy vehicle compliance auditor – people need qualifications for that and you may not have the expertise to know if the documents you are looking at are actually compliant with the HVNL or not.
Here’s some updates we recommend so your questions pick up the HVNL amendment.
1. NHVAS Accreditation
If your prequalification questions ask whether transport providers have NHVAS accreditation, this will need to be adapted to suit the amendment. The NHVAS is being phased out and replaced with the Heavy Vehicle Accreditation, which is a two tiered program, the first step being the General Safety Accreditation, (GSA) which gives access to the Maintenance Assurance Accreditation (MAA) and Alternative Compliance Accreditation (ACA) for mass and fatigue. Both systems will be running concurrently as NHVAS operators have up to 2 years to transition across.
2. Mass and Dimension Limits
If you mention concessional mass limits (CML) – these are being removed. There will be general mass limits (GML) and higher mass limits (HML). GML picks up the extra weight that was CML. There are also changes to the steer axle limits for Euro IV vehicles.
If you mention dimension limits – the length limits for general access vehicles is increased from 19 metres to 20 metres.
3. Driver fatigue and fitness to drive
How the transport operator manages driver fatigue and the risk of driving while impaired by fatigue is always of importance. An impaired driver is a risk to themselves and others.
There is a new part to this. Drivers have a duty not to drive a heavy vehicle if impaired by fatigue or if unfit to drive. Your prequalification should refer to these together. Seek assurance that the business has systems in place to manage both.
Any references to Basic or Advanced Fatigue Management should also include Alternative Compliance Accreditation (ACA) for fatigue. The National Driver Work Diary is being updated to reflect these new fields.
Wrapping Up
They are the three main areas of the amendment to cross reference to your prequalification tool. Remember, when you’re asking other businesses about their compliance, it doesn’t give much confidence if your question set isn’t even up to date.
As we say at CoR Comply – look in your own backyard first. Get your systems right and compliant before you put your efforts into what other parties do.
