ACCESS in ACTION
32 | ACCESS
in
ACTION | FEBRUARY 2014
Why is it a company’s transport and
transport operator is looked upon with the
least amount of credibility and yet in most
cases they are often the only person our
clients see on a regular basis? Think about
it; companies invest time and money in up
skilling their staff; managers are required
to keep their skills current and up to date,
our admin staff are encouraged to gain
qualifications through traineeships. Now
with the help of our members we have an
apprenticeship specific to EWP’s.
Legislation may have got the training
ball rolling however, it’s accepted practice
for companies to invest in up skilling their
staff. The government supports this with
funding in a lot of areas of education and
training.
What about our truckies! How many
companies can say they have invested in
skills for their drivers like they have for
their other staff? How many can say they
have taken a good hard look at their
transport network. Can we honestly say we
have focused on transport as well as new
sales technics? As stated in my opening
sentence our drivers have a unique and
very specific roll in customer satisfaction,
often solving problems that may seem
minor at the time but without our truckies’
willingness to please, these minor issues
can turn into a deal breaker. What I’m
trying to say here is, our drivers can
have a major influence in the customer’s
experience.
Unfortunately at the moment the
transport industry is going through a very
bad period with too many tragic incidents
happening all too frequently.
Taken from the RMS web site are some
sobering facts: “Improvements to heavy
vehicle design and safety features have
made a proven contribution to reducing
the number and severity of crashes.
Although they are not always at fault, the
size and mass of heavy vehicles make any
crash a serious one. While their numbers
make up only 2.4% of NSW motor vehicle
registrations and 7.1% of kilometres
travelled by all NSW vehicles, heavy
Training update:
By EWPA Training Director: Phil Middleton
Transport, an asset or a liability?
vehicles are involved in about 21% of all
road fatalities.”
It’s clear manufacturers are working on
making trucks safer on our roads.
Also on the RMS website was this
announcement: “To help improve heavy
vehicle safety, Transport for NSW funded a
$5m national pilot to assess the feasibility
of electronic work diaries for heavy vehicle
drivers. In the pilot, electronic work diaries
replaced the written work diaries currently
required by law to be used by many truck
and bus drivers.”
The article concluded with: “The pilot
assessed how electronic work diaries
performed in terms of safety, driver and
other user acceptance, technical feasibility,
legislation and policy, cost benefit and
speed monitoring.”
Now the question is, what is industry
doing or, more specifically, what is your
company doing to make our roads and
drivers safer?
Ask yourself the following:
• Do your drivers receive sufficient
training for all facets of their job
including customer service?
• Are the drivers trained in safe operation
of the equipment they are loading/
unloading?
• Does your company have a fatigue
management policy for drivers?
• Does your company have a specific policy
for using mobile phones while driving a
heavy vehicle?
Others to consider: drug and alcohol,
specific to the operation of heavy vehicles;
and unloading or loading in a high traffic
areas.
Finally, are these policies and procedures
monitored and reviewed regularly for
effectiveness?
The EWPA received a letter from one
of our members - Chris Moyes, the GM of
Flexi Hire in Wacol Queensland. Chris has
given us permission to publish his transport
case study on how Flexi Hire is meeting its
transport safety responsibilities (see p12).
Congratulations to Chris and the team at
Flexi Hire.
HR
As always there is never an idle moment in training. The new yellow card program is up and running and most of the teething
problems have been fixed or are in the process of. 80% of trainers have adopted the app for submitting the application to the
association. We are currently conducting a trainer performance evaluation. The information gathered will help us with identifying
issues or training trends. Our audit software programme has been updated to match the new training program and will be
commencing in February. Now the training program has been running for six months and we are on the cusp of launching the new
gold card training program we thought it would be timely to conduct a review of all of our current training material. Soon all
members, manufactures and regulators will be invited to comment or suggest changes that keep our program at the cutting edge of
industry needs.
The Unit of competence we have
aligned our training to, RIIHAN301B has
undergone a change to RIIHAN301D.
These changes came about through
changes to the standards for training
packages.
National Standards Skills Council (NSSC)
stated on their web site: “The Standards
apply to the design and development
of Training Packages by Industry Skills
Councils (ISCs), which are then endorsed
by the National Skills Standards Council
(NSSC). The Standards are developed
by the NSSC, for endorsement by
Commonwealth and State/Territory
Ministers.”
New Standards for Training Packages
were endorsed by the Standing Council on
Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment
(SCOTESE) on 16 November 2012.
As a result industry skills councils are
going through a systematic review of
their training packages to make them
compliant with the new standards.
What it means for us!
While the new unit of competence
is equal to the old unit there has been
change to the presentation of the unit to
the reader. The most significant change
is to trainer’s industry qualifications and
industry sector assessment methods.
Our team is working on the issues
and we are confident we will meet this
challenge with minimal effect to our
training program.
In the meantime the EWPA will still
be offering a pathway to a statement of
attainment to RIIHAN301B for successful
applicants.
HR
Unit of Competence Change
