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.
- Maintain their vehicles and have auditable systems for pre-trip inspections, fault reporting, response and repair, planned and unplanned maintenance.
- Manage driver fatigue and fitness to drive
- 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.
Because, at the end the day, these people are transporting yours or your customers goods and you want them to 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 ask them questions and you may seek some examples to verify they do what they say they do. This is your prequalification process.
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 actually need qualifications for that and you might not have the expertise to know if they 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, so there will be general mass limits (GML) and higher mass limits after 1 August 2026, but general mass limits pick 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 other road users.
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 ACA and alternative compliance hours. 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 the business that’s asking and checking the compliance systems can’t get their own compliance system right, it doesn’t give much confidence that they know what they’re doing.
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.
