Digital vehicle inspections enhance safety
Digital vehicle inspections enhance safety
Digital vehicle inspections keep your drivers and vehicles safe on the road. As well as being able to customise inspection checklists to your fleet, you get a record of compliance to help meet Health & Safety obligations.
Vehicle pre-start inspections are an important system for identifying mechanical defects and safety hazards before they lead to equipment failure or, worse yet, personal injury. Using a pre-departure checklist, the driver conducts a routine inspection of the vehicle’s exterior and interior as well as its mechanical and electrical systems, fluid levels, and any safety devices.
Beyond compliance with Chain of Responsibility legislation and workplace safety policy, pre-trip inspections alert you to minor issues before they become major costs, allowing you to save money on repairs, reduce downtime, and track trends. With insight into your most common vehicle problems, you can analyse any service or equipment gaps to improve operational performance and reduce fleet risk.
Digital pre-start inspections: More accurate, less work
WA Stabilisers in Perth use the EROAD Inspect app to manage their pre-start inspections. While pre-starts have always been a requirement, they weren’t always captured electronically. Before adopting EROAD in 2020, WA Stabilisers kept records of their pre-starts in one of two ways: using a paper logbook or an online form.
The problem? The form was quite brief and standardised, failing to account for the differences between specific trucks, trailers, and stabilisers. Even though these items were sometimes nothing alike, their pre-start checklists looked the same. The old system was also inconsistent and required a lot of admin:
“All the pre-starts, whether they were electronic or paper, would end up with me and I had to look at every single one,” says business support manager Magda Klimczak. Magda then had to note any faults, let the workshop manager know, create a work order, and schedule any necessary repair or maintenance. From there, job progress was tracked manually and the paperwork archived for compliance.
EROAD Inspect: Completely customisable and secure
A member of the Hiway Group, who use EROAD products to manage their businesses in New Zealand and Australia, WA Stabilisers found that EROAD Inspect gave them the automation and group-wide customisability they were seeking.
“We spent quite a bit of time talking about what we wanted in the Inspect app, and we found it easy to make different checklists for almost every machine,” says Magda. “We had some personalised changes made to suit our internal systems as well, which was great.”
EROAD Inspect is easier to use, faster, and more secure than their old system, which like any manual system was vulnerable to late or lost paperwork that might also be incomplete or hard to read. On top of substantially reducing Magda’s workload, EROAD Inspect keeps everyone in the loop to prevent missed defects and the duplication of efforts:
“The workshop manager gets an email every time there’s a defect. Straight away, he can log in and have a look at the pre-start, have a look at the pictures attached, have a look at the comments.”
And if there aren’t any faults, Magda and her team know that as well, without having to review every pre-start form. Only items requiring action are flagged for follow-up, including cases where an operator has yet to complete their pre-start inspection. This ensures full driver compliance and reliable recordkeeping. In the event of an accident or investigation, you’ll have complete historic data you can instantly pull for review.
Know what’s going on 24/7
Fleet-wide visibility of defects also makes it much easier for the workshop to manage maintenance and repairs, since they know exactly what to expect ahead of time and where in the workflow jobs are.
“It’s easy to check what you’ve already done, whether you might have missed something, and what’s coming up as well.” In many cases, they can order parts before the machine is even in the yard, which has significantly increased workshop efficiency and vehicle uptime.
Above all, WA Stabilisers appreciates the total peace of mind they get from using a robust, integrated digital solution. EROAD telematics keep the management team apprised of where their drivers are, what they’re doing – and (where relevant) what they haven’t done.
“We know they’ve done their pre-starts because we’re tracking whether pre-starts have been done or not every single day. We know they’re safe, and we know that if there’s something wrong with any machine, it’s being communicated.”
Are your vehicles and machinery up to compliance?
EROAD Inspect makes pre-start inspections easy, providing fleet-wide visibility and complete digital records for audits and accident investigations.
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