Ideagen Plant Assessor and Logan City Council

Logan City Council required a more streamlined and efficient way to manage machinery safety and compliance, pre-start assessments and safety documents to reduce machine downtime, meet machinery safety obligations and keep its people safe. The Council looked for an innovative one-stop shop solution, selecting Plant Assessor as their provider of choice.

About Logan City Council

Logan City Council services an area around 950 square kilometres between Brisbane, Ipswich and the Gold Coast and is home to more than 350,000 people. The Council is responsible for the upkeep of local facilities and community infrastructure such as roads, parks and landfill, which requires a fleet of more than 1,100 pieces of machinery and equipment. That’s where the Plant Fleet Services department comes in. 

The Plant Fleet Services department buys, maintains and disposes of mobile plant assets for the Council. It has a fleet  register which includes heavy trucks, yellow plant and high risk items as well as smaller pieces of equipment such as whipper snippers which are used for a wide variety of projects. Working in the Plant Fleet Services department is Workshop and Operations Program Leader, Richard Thompson and Technical Risk and Compliance Officer, Eric Reid.

Challenges faced by Logan City Council

Logan City Council faced a number of challenges in relation to its fleet safety and compliance. One of these issues was collecting safety information relating to its plant assets. The Council required easy access to documents such as manufacturer’s information, pre-start records and risk management information. The existing processes did not provide a high level of visibility or easy access to machinery data, and this style of document management could have made it difficult for Logan City Council to present and prove its compliance if a machinery related incident occurred on one of its sites.

Another issue faced by the Council’s Plant Fleet Services was related to its paper documentation processes. Paper-based systems for pre-starts and risk assessments proved slow and lacked transparency between workers. Eric Reid says, as a result, sharing information between employees was inefficient and time consuming, and resulted in delays for pre-start actions.

In addition, inconsistencies were arising in the Council’s machinery compliance management. Richard Thompson says the lack of continuity was particularly obvious when various staff completed risk assessments on the same machine. 

“One of our workers could go out and deem items a risk where another worker can go out and deem there’s another set of risks that weren't on there the first time,” he says.

Logan City Council realised these problems needed to be addressed, so it spoke to Plant Assessor about a solution.

Why Plant Assessor?

Plant Assessor’s simple, one-platform solution to improve machinery compliance became an attractive option for Logan City Council, working with the team to support it in overcoming safety and other machinery compliance challenges across multiple sites and machine types.

One of the features that stood out to Plant Fleet Services was Plant Assessor’s robust machinery risk assessments that are backed by the machinery compliance engine (MCE). This identifies applicable hazards at a machine level, risk levels are assessed, hazard controls are defined and recommendations on actions and holistic systems are in place to review and maintain compliance.

Mr Thompson says the way risk assessments are built in Plant Assessor reduces subjectivity in the Council’s risk assessment process.

“It provides consistent questions for the asset that meet legislation, Australian standards and codes of practice. Without that it’s up to the individual to decide what the risks are,” he says.

All the assessor needs to do when completing a risk assessment is select their machine from more than 110,000 makes and models that are in Plant Assessor’s database, answer the questions and they will receive a report outlining any control measures that need to be implemented and maintenance that needs to be undertaken. This method of completing risk assessments helped improve the Council’s ability to meet all legal obligations and prove compliance in the event of an incident or an audit.

Plant Assessor’s digital document management system was another attractive feature for Logan City Council. It allows for all compliance documents to be stored in one place and simplifies the process of tracking machinery transfer information when acquiring new machines. In addition, it gives Council peace of mind as all documents are stored on a cloud-based system that can be accessed anywhere, anytime, and allows staff to share documents with whoever needs them, based on selected permissions.

The digital pre-starts in Pre-Start Plus also created a more streamlined way of managing machinery compliance and safety on a daily basis for Logan City Council. The operator or assessor simply answers the questions relating to the machine before receiving a result confirming whether the machine is right to operate or not. The result can then be instantly shared with other staff members, increasing efficiency and reducing ambiguity about the machine’s compliance status. It also provides greater transparency to office-based staff at the Council who are responsible for reviewing and reconciling daily pre-start results, and quickly correcting any issues that may arise. 

Results

Logan City Council has witnessed a great improvement in its machinery compliance and safety processes following the implementation of Plant Assessor. Consistency around machinery compliance is just one of those improvements. Visibility around machinery compliance has also increased, thanks to the digital document management system and the ability to view all collateral and reports in the one location, anywhere, anytime. This also provides workers in Plant Fleet Services greater transparency around the availability of all machines and their compliance statuses.

Plant Assessor has also reduced the time spent by staff completing paper-based pre-starts and risk assessments, making the management of machinery compliance a more efficient process. Logan City Council is now saving 4 hours a week on pre-start completion. For this reason, Mr Reid suggests that all Councils and companies with mobile machines consider implementing Plant Assessor.

“I would definitely recommend Plant Assessor for future use at other companies, just to maintain compliance throughout the year. It protects the operators; protects the company”, he says. 

Mr Thompson agrees. 

"I would tell anyone that's considering using Plant Assessor to jump on. It's improved the way we manage our risks around fleet assets."

- Richard Thompson, Workshop and Operations Program Leader, Logan City Council