Now is the time to take the chance to have your say on accreditation. The whole subject of vehicle accreditation has been a fraught one in recent years and is likely to be that way until this long series of review processes work through the system.
Now is the opportunity to get the concerns of the trucking industry in front of the people who will be writing the rules on this subject into the foreseeable future. The problems around accreditation seem to have made the powers that be afraid to use the word itself in their communications. Instead, we are now talking about the subject of ‘assurance’.
The National Transport Commission has just released its latest Issues Paper, one of a series around the process to completely rewrite the Heavy Vehicle National Law, and are calling for submissions and comments on this whole can of worms.
“Assurance schemes give regulated parties options for demonstrating their capacity to comply in an alternative way to the same standard,” says the NTC Paper. “Regulated parties can choose the option that is most suitable to their operations.
“In an assurance framework, responsibility for risk management is shared between the regulator and regulated parties. A regulator is able to hand over risk management responsibility to a regulated party because they are given assurance (confidence) in compliance capacity through the regulated party’s participation in the scheme. This leads to efficiencies for both the regulator and the regulated parties because each one is able to take on the role best suited to them.
“The National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme (NHVAS), which sits within the HVNL, and the Western Australian Heavy Vehicle Accreditation (WAHVA) scheme are led by government. The HVNL also includes several assurance mechanisms that sit outside the NHVAS. There are also industry-led schemes such as TruckSafe and CraneSafe.”
The issues paper which the NTC has released this week can be downloaded here.
