Hassall notes provisions align with those advised three decades ago
The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Australia (CILTA) is backing reform to aspects of the National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme (NHVAS).
The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) saw revised Business Rules and Standards for the NHVAS come into force last month.
CILTA national chair Dr Kim Hassall puts some historical perspective on the development, seeing its roots in the then-National Road Transport Commission’s (NRTC’s) initial accreditation efforts.
“Back in 1994/95, a Draft Standards Australia standard for the road transport industry was produced,” Hassall says.
“The sub-committee reference was QR/2/2 but, after four meetings, the first ‘public domain’ national road transport standard was abandoned.
“Why? It was thought that the NRTC’s new National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme would be the new national standard although the industry had a plethora of schemes, such as Truck Care, Trucksafe, Pacir, and Transcare to name only four of the schemes that were being developed.
“The international Quality Assurance community were amazed that the road transport industry in Australia had one dozen schemes that were on offer by 2001.”
He notes that, two decades later, Australia has essentially two major proprietary schemes:
The governmental NHVAS proprietary scheme, which was handed over the NHVR in 2013, “seemingly along with its policy development, which is usually the domain of the National Transport Commission (NTC)”
Trucksafe, the Australian Trucking Association’s certification scheme, although ISO 39001 does creep into the picture but usually only in Europe but can be adopted here through customer request.
Read how the NHVR flagged the NHVAS changes, here
“What should be applauded is the fact that the governmental NHVAS scheme now ‘has a requirement for crash and incident reporting of major and significant events’,” Hassall says
“This aligns tightly with the 1994/95 Draft Road Transport ISO Standard section 4.20.2, which requires continuous reporting of non-conformances.
“So, some 27 years later, NHVAS is adopting features of the Standards Australia Draft ISO Road Transport National Standard (Public Domain) with regard to reporting for events such as accidents and regulatory breaches.
“Will it take another generation to assimilate other features of the then Draft ISO 1994/95 public domain standard into the current requirements for the two proprietary road transport certification schemes in Australia?
“Small steps, however, towards this end, are always welcome as are the current developments.”