Paper-based fleet maintenance reporting may become a thing of the past for bus operators
A new app that can help bus operators perform their fleet maintenance checks has hit the market.
Brisbane-based Chekrite director Jordan Millar developed the ChekRite app after speaking to his father Roger Millar, who was investigating why a truck engine had died at a mining site in Queensland.
“He went out there to do an autopsy on the engine and found that while pre-starts were often being performed, the process of getting the information was so inefficient that the engine had died before anyone got to looking at the pre-starts,” he says.
Maintenance staff at the mine had no idea if the forms were being completed correctly or timely, and the reporting hadn’t been enforced.
“As a result this company had to spend hundreds of thousands to replace the engine.”
This got Jordan Millar thinking about ways mining firms could better manage their maintenance checks and move away from an unreliable and outdated, paper-based system that wasn’t working for many.
“I noticed that a lot of the mining companies were still relying on a paper-based system for their compliance, reporting and maintenance checks,” Millar says.
“Not only is this costly but it’s inefficient, because the person who is looking at those forms doesn’t just have to look at what’s wrong, but they have to wade through all the other checked boxes to see what’s right.”
The app can be installed on any Apple iPad and requires very little training to learn to use.
The most obvious application Millar suggests is the management of fleet maintenance checks and schedules, which is an integral and vital part of business for bus and coach operators.
He attended the bus summit in Cairns recently and fielded a number of enquiries, but it’s too soon to tell if these will blossom into trials or full-blown contracts.
“There is certainly a lot of interest from bus operators and we will be putting a lot of time and effort into showing operators the benefits ChekRite provides.
This industry generates a lot of paperwork and we’d like to help bus operators resolve this.
“The main benefits really are compliance, consistency and cost savings,” Millar says.
“Using this system you can be sure that all your drivers, mechanics and maintenance staff are doing all the right checks all the time.”
Data is not only stored electronically, but any serious faults will generate alerts instantly — which are passed on to the fleet manager straight away.
“We actually monitor the data that gets entered into the reporting system and bosses can access this information in real-time and order a part as soon as a fault with one of their vehicles is spotted,” Millar says.
“If it needs to be off the road for a week or several, weeks then they can arrange for a cover vehicle or to manage the workload accordingly.”