NHVAS MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT ACCREDITATION

The National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme (NHVAS) Maintenance Management Module encourages Heavy Vehicle Operators to take greater responsibility for maintaining their vehicles correctly to ensure they maintain the vehicles to the manufacturer’s recommendations or better, leading to improved vehicle & road safety.

This will assist you to manage your business assets more efficiently, by implementing clear procedures to be followed, assisting to ensure that your trucks and trailers are periodically maintained and also reducing the risk of penalties for unroadworthy equipment. Initially, by having clear procedures in place, this will assist in ensuring that vehicles & configurations are compliant and reducing downtime with fewer delays caused by breakdowns.

The benefits to operators include:

  • Encouragement of responsibility from all stakeholders;
  • More consistent compliance with road safety standards;
  • Assisting with administering and control of documents;
  • Improvements in productivity and efficiency due to fewer breakdowns/faults; –
  • Improved Worker/Driver safety and wellbeing;
  • Improved Worker/Driver morale and attendance;
  • Correct maintenance of your vehicles at all times with consequent savings
  • Minimising likelihood of major repairs
  • Prolonged vehicle life
  • Increased customer confidence with better maintained vehicles
  • Better Worker/Driver confidence
  • Foster better relationships with regulatory agencies;
  • Increased customer confidence with better maintained vehicles
  • Reduced impact of enforcement

Benefits to the community include better and more consistent compliance with road safety standards. As an accredited operator under the Maintenance Management Module, you are required to know that your vehicles are maintained in good working order at all times with faults being recorded, reported, assessed and repaired whenever they occur. Accurate records of your maintenance procedures are required to be created and maintained as evidence that correct maintenance of your vehicles is taking place. How you create and monitor these records as evidence is at your own discretion.

It is necessary to document your system you intend to follow and explain how it works. This will be your Maintenance Management System, which could include as an example the manufacturers service record book in each vehicle signed by the service dealer, or your own workshop records combined with dated stickers of last service/inspection details attached to the vehicles’ windscreens, or otherwise the TransAssist standard service forms and registers.

You are required to have documents that prove your procedures are effective, and your vehicles are properly maintained with daily checks occurring, faults observed, recorded and repaired as necessary to maintain accreditation. Essentially, this means that your vehicle servicing and repair records are current & retained, and you must support this by demonstrating that you have followed your written procedures.

Your Maintenance Management System must comply with the requirements outlined in the National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme (NHVAS): Business Rules and Standards. As an accredited operator, enrolled in Maintenance Management, you will be audited periodically by an independent auditor to ensure that you are continuing to meet the standards of the scheme. If your audit is successful, your accreditation will be renewed. Alternatively, you may be asked to improve your system before renewal of your accreditation.

Accreditation does not exempt you from the law. You may be audited at any time, with your vehicles also subject to on-road checks to ensure conformance to the NHVAS. Maintenance Management Accreditation will ensure you receive preferential treatment from enforcement agencies as you will be subject to fewer on-road checks. In the instance of undergoing a random check, your vehicle will be dealt with as quickly as possible. The NHVAS Accreditation Label on your vehicle and/or trailing unit/s will identify this to inspectors.

In effect, having Elite Compliance Consulting (ECC) assist you in implementing a Maintenance Management System, the following resources and standard forms will be provided within the Maintenance Management System Manual:
Monthly Compliance Reports for Maintenance
Training Needs Analysis & Register
Training, Awareness & Education Records and Resources
Vehicle Resources Register
Annual Internal Review for Maintenance
Non Conformance Forms and Non Conformance Register
Vehicle & Configuration Register
Accident, Incident & Near Miss Report Form & Investigation Resources
Truck and Trailer Service Forms and Register
– Record of Competency and Table of Tolerances
– Safe Operating Procedure (SOP) for:
Vehicle Inspection & Fault Reporting
Vehicle Breakdown
– Vehicle Maintenance

Alternatively if you already have a Maintenance Management System implemented, and would like assistance in revising or updating your internal documentation, please contact Elite Compliance Consulting. You are able to purchase our full suite of Maintenance Management forms. Click here.


Click here to see how easy it is to enrol in NHVAS Maintenance Management Module.