Background
Market-leaders, ‘Babcock Critical Services’ provide fleet and asset management capability to Britain’s emergency services including the Fire & Rescue Service’s New Dimension Fleet. The company has a national maintenance contract to inspect and maintain this fleet which includes specialist vehicles and equipment for major disruptive events such as Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) materials, collapsed or unstable structures, and for moving large volumes of water.

Requirement
Periodic, independent audits are required on the company’s performance and compliance during the contract to ensure that statutory maintenance and high availability levels of equipment and vehicles are maintained. Project Management Consultants ‘Stonac’ were commissioned to lead the audit and selected CMI Synergy to supplement their audit team.

Approach
The audit required the team to select a 10% sample of the fleet (23 prime mover vehicles and 29 equipment modules) in a way that represented the different capabilities and geographical spread of the fleet.

Each vehicle selected for audit was subjected to a meticulous review of available records and certification to ensure full compliance with statutory maintenance, routine maintenance, test and calibration, defect repair and, consumable replenishment.

Any identified non-compliances were recorded, documented and categorised with a RAG (Red, Amber. Green ‘traffic light’) rating depending on the severity.  All non-compliances were investigated by Babcock through a ‘right to reply’ process. This allowed them to identify if there were valid reasons or extenuating circumstances for any non-compliances e.g. because of misfiling or if vehicles were on active duty and unavailable for inspection.

Outcomes
The team documented the final findings in a detailed written report along with recommendations for improvements to the inspection process. A summary of the findings and recommendations were also presented at a joint meeting of the Babcock contracts team and representatives from the Fire & Rescue Service.