Bundaberg Regional Council was formed in March 2008 when Bundaberg City Council, Burnett Shire, Isis Shire and Kolan Shire Councils merged to become one entity.

Strategically situated at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef the Council covers 6451 square kilometres and is home to almost 100,000 people. 

Andrew Railz, Fleet Manager at Bundaberg Regional Council has been responsible for transformation of Council’s approach to machinery and fleet safety since 2008.

In that time, he has implemented a comprehensive fleet management system and formulated a fleet management strategy based upon sound asset management principles.

In March 2012, Andrew attended an IPWEA Fleet Management Seminar in Rockhampton. At this seminar, Plant Assessor presented its Plant Safety Management Model.

Following this seminar, Andrew decided that Plant Assessor was the right solution for Council to adopt to help ensure its plant was safe to use.

“There were several key features that appealed to me,” explains Andrew.

“Firstly, the Plant Assessor is systematic and transparent. It’s a centralised system that does not rely upon any one individual to manage. Our staff do not need deep safety knowledge or intimate knowledge of each machine type to complete an inspection.

“It was also immediately obvious that inspections were able to be conducted more quickly than before and the process was much more thorough.

“All this means that inspections are more consistent because we are not forced to make subjective judgements about safety risks on plant items.”

Since implementation in mid-2012, Plant Assessor has been a resounding success.

Andrew and the fleet team, including Fleet Maintenance Co-ordinator have been responsible for a seamless implementation of a comprehensive plant safety management plan.

One of the reasons for this prolific success has been Council’s systematic approach to the process. The fleet team saw that adding plant risk assessments as a scheduled maintenance activity would minimise the time and cost required to inspect while ensuring plant items were regularly determined to be safe for use.

As a result, since the implementation, Council has undertaken more than 800 ‘Do It Yourself’ plant risk assessments.

“We made the decision to invest some time and effort with the people at Plant Assessor to ensure we knew how to manage the safety related aspects of our fleet and our equipment on a day-to-day basis and it really has paid dividends,” said Andrew.

“Before this, we relied heavily on scratchy information in handbooks and feedback from operators. The risk assessment process for a single item of machinery could take days to complete. But an even bigger challenge was keeping abreast of legislative changes relating to the risk assessment for each item of plant or machinery.

“Because the Plant Assessor Risk Assessment Surveys are machine-specific and non-subjective, we have been able to spread the task of assessing the machines to a greater number of employees under the coordination of just one person. Changes to legislative requirements are automatically updated and the task of interpreting the WHS jargon is no longer our concern.

“We can now identify and eliminate risks and minimise any downtime. Our machines are safe and compliant, and we have significantly reduced the time and monetary investment in our risk assessments and control solutions.”

To see how Plant Assessor might help you get on top of machinery safety, please call 1300728853 or email info@assessor.com.au