The External Safety System Compliance Auditor

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The External Safety System Compliance Auditor

Welcome to the tenth and final article in this series on trucking safety systems! This series took a dive into the components of trucking company safety systems and it will end with an article further describing the role of external safety auditors and their relationship with carriers.

An expression so common in auditing communities that I cannot ascertain the original source is “In God we trust; everyone else will be audited”. While humorous, this expression hints at an adversarial relationship between the auditing community and the community they audit.

This should come as no big surprise. Auditors are generally responsible for making sure people and organisations are doing what they are supposed to be doing and what they said they were going to be doing. Having someone check up on you can send a message of mistrust. Trust is important in relationships, and to have someone accuse you of not being trustworthy can feel deeply disheartening - even if the accusation is weakly implicit.

If people were completely honest and compliant at all times, there would be no need for audits. Alas, this is not the case, and so auditors serve a vital purpose in ensuring compliance with the laws that society deems important. Compliant behaviour and operations do not need to worry about audits; however, not worrying is always easier said than done.

From my experience in transportation safety, audits frequently dominate discussions when safety professionals gather. Auditors are often revered as gatekeepers: individuals who have tremendous power and godly insight into the world of safety and compliance. And in many ways, this reverence is just and deserved: the auditors I have known have been experts in their field, and since they represent the law they do operate from a position of power.

But, the mystery around an auditor’s role serves no useful purpose and should be dispelled. Auditors are professionals with a job to do, and learning more about what they do and where they fit in the bigger scheme of carrier safety systems can help audits feel less intimidating without downplaying their importance.

So with that, let’s talk about auditors.

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The Role of a Vehicle File in the Carrier Safety Management System

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The Role of a Vehicle File in the Carrier Safety Management System

Welcome to article seven of ten in this series on trucking safety systems! After starting this series by looking at the roles systems play in organisations and dissecting parts of a carrier’s safety systems, I will now discuss ways in which mandatory vehicle files can be leveraged for greater control over the carrier’s preventative maintenance program.

Vehicle files, like driver files, are compliance requirements for carriers in Alberta [1]. Their purpose is to record important identifying information about the vehicles operated by the carrier and to serve as proof that the carrier has a functioning maintenance program.

Carriers concerned only with compliance will begrudgingly maintain vehicle files only out of an interest in performing well in a future audit. And there is some value in going no further than basic compliance: for example, the requirement to respond to notices of defect (ie. recalls) from vehicle manufacturers can lead a carrier to reduce their risk considerably depending on the nature of the defect.

But, maintenance records provide immense opportunities to control costs and improve uptime, and in order to do so, a carrier needs records and the ability to analyse data. The basic vehicle file lays a foundation of compliance on which more elaborate systems of maintenance management can be built. In the following sections, I will provide a quick overview of the record requirements in an Alberta-based carrier’s vehicle file, and then describe ways in which these records can be used to improve the maintenance system.

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