In a world of innovation and digitalisation, the heavy transport industry is still struggling with paper processes. For an industry that is heavily regulated with strict compliance and record keeping requirements, it’s hard to believe that the majority of records rely on this ancient Egyptian technology. With recent amendments to the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) and Chain of Responsibility (CoR) laws, it is ever more apparent that the industry is still under-serviced by effective digital solutions.
Since Docketbook was founded in 2015, we have set out to serve the heavy transport industry and provide innovative solutions to digitalising its records. A key record and the core of our business is the humble delivery docket. Dockets are an important source of data that feeds the core business operation of transport companies but also provide evidence of CoR compliance to the whole supply chain.
The current state of compliance?
A key change to the CoR legislation is that responsibilities extend through the entire supply chain and do not stop with the driver and transport company. The burden of proof focusses on ensuring that systems and processes are effective in avoiding incidents, rather than picking apart the failures when an incident occurs. Finally, executive responsibilities are more explicitly defined and a number of these responsibilities cannot be delegated.
So how do we measure compliance? In short, with great difficulty. Particularly for smaller operators that don’t have the resources of dedicated CoR officers or WHS staff, the time and effort to maintain records for compliance purposes is large. Nights and weekends spent filing paper records and maintaining spreadsheets.
For supply chain partners, the challenge of ensuring compliance is even greater. Whilst they are provided with dockets, often containing information such as checklists and fault reports, their ability to consolidate, report and check these records is, lets just say, constrained.
Increasing costs
The CoR changes are intended to address the major risks in this industry, and spread the duty of care across the supply chain. However, they also bring with them increased costs. The cost of compliance for manual paper-based systems is sky rocketing and, again, it’s the small end of town bearing many of these costs.
Introducing efficiency
The good news is that, just as compliance costs have increased over time, the cost of introducing digital systems continues to decrease. Increasing coverage of data networks, ubiquity of smartphones and tablets and delivery of software as a service solutions has slashed the costs of adopting technology solutions. And not only that, the efficiency introduced by collecting and reporting your data electronically can introduce a step change reduction in company overheads.
Three birds with one stone - Docketbook
Docketbook has been designed from the ground-up to replace the paper triplicate docket process. It provides drivers with a simple user interface to create and send dockets that have been uniquely configured to meet the needs of each business. The data is then instantly accessible to report on fatigue management, load dimensions and mass and prestart inspections. Commercial, NHVL and safety requirements all addressed from a single electronic record.
“We can instantly report number of loads, number and length of breaks and prestart checks on one simple report”, shared Tony Cassisi, Operations Manager at ACH. “This data is also instantly available to our customers and subcontractors so meeting our safety responsibilities can truly be a team effort.”
Now is the time to mobilise your workforce and move to the new standard in digital dockets.
Book a demo today or call us at +61 7 3186 8651 to learn more about how digital dockets are revolutionising our industry.
