HGV and trailer safety inspection software. No signature until the sheet is complete.

The sheet that lets an operator down is rarely the one with a frightening defect on it. It is the one with the laden brake test missing, pressures written in after the tyres were pumped up, a wheel off with no re-torque booked, or the declaration signed in the wrong box. The lorry may have been perfectly safe that day. The paperwork just cannot prove it.

What the paperwork has to show

Inspection and maintenance records are section 4 of DVSA’s maintenance investigation questions, and the examiner analyses the last 15 months of them in detail. DVSA’s Guide to maintaining roadworthiness lists what a record should hold, including the vehicle identity by registration or trailer number, the condition of each item inspected, and the inspector’s name and signature. The report must be fully completed, and the vehicle declared roadworthy, before it goes back into service. Records are kept for at least 15 months.

Every safety inspection should include a brake performance assessment, by roller brake tester, an electronic braking performance monitoring system (EBPMS) or a decelerometer with brake temperatures, and a signed printout should be attached to the record. For goods vehicles the guide calls a laden test on a calibrated roller brake tester the most effective method. Where EBPMS is not used it expects at least four laden brake tests spread evenly across the year, which can include the annual test. A decelerometer cannot be used to test a trailer’s brakes. Tread depths and tyre pressures go on the report as presented.

How often

The guide gives typical intervals for goods vehicles by the work they do, and inspection dates should be planned at least six months ahead:

Our guide to safety inspection intervals for lorries and trailers covers how to settle on yours.

The PMI on a tablet

The technician opens the inspection from the vehicle’s tag. Its items are those of DVSA’s HGV inspection manual, numbered with their IM references, from cab security and the speedometer and tachograph to the chassis, suspension, brake systems and the brake performance items. A van gets the same list without references, as the manual does not cover vans. Each item is marked OK, X for a safety defect, REP, RPL, RTO, N/A, or M to keep an eye on. You can re-word and re-order the items, retire ones you never use and add your own.

Kit a vehicle does not have, such as a trailer coupling on a rigid that never tows, can be remembered as not fitted, so it starts at N/A next time and the technician can still mark it found. The sheet saves itself every few seconds, on the tablet and in the office, so a dead battery under a trailer loses nothing. Two technicians can work the same inspection from two tablets, and their answers are put together field by field.

Brakes

A brake test goes with the inspection or on its own: roller brake tester, decelerometer or road test. It is recorded laden, with the option of noting whether the load was over or under 65%. Then come the measured weight, service, secondary and parking brake efficiency, imbalance on each axle and passed on locks if you record them, pass or fail, the tester used, and the printout as a photo or PDF from the tester or the tablet’s document scanner. Lining or pad left goes in at each side of each axle, in percent or millimetres. A failed test cannot be declared roadworthy, needs the brake performance item marked as a fault, and takes the vehicle off the road.

Tyres wheel by wheel

Tread, pressure and DOT date at every wheel position, with last time’s figures beside each box, plus the tyre’s pattern and condition. Where you record pressures as found and as set, a tyre found low becomes a fault and a rectification as the figures are typed, so a trailer tyre found at 90 psi is written down before anyone reaches for the airline. More on the tyre register and wheel torque.

Repeat faults and items to watch

An item faulted at consecutive inspections is flagged as a repeat. Anything marked M is carried to the next inspection, shown first, to keep watching or clear, and can go out to the next walkaround as a directed check.

Parts fitted

A fault put right at the inspection can take the parts that went on it: what each is, the part number, how many, the supplier and a photo of the label, with the cost now or when the invoice arrives. Once signed they become parts fitted on the vehicle and count in its running costs. More on costs, parts and fuel.

Checked before anyone signs

Before the sheet can be signed, HGVault reads it as an examiner would and lists what needs attention, for example:

• no brake test result, or no printout
• no record of who did the brake test
• a steer tyre over ten years old on a front steered axle
• tyre pressures not recorded before inflating
• brake work done with no brake test after it
• a wheel taken off with no re-torque booked
• a fault repeated from the last inspection
• an inspection that is late with no VOR record covering the gap

Each of these can be set to block the signature, warn, or stay off, under Settings, Examiner checks. Fixing them on the day, with the lorry still over the pit, beats explaining them a year later.

Signed in the workshop and the office

The technician signs with their PIN where you ask for one, and their irtec licence number and level print under the signature when they held a current one that day. A supervisor can sign it off. The office then works through the scrutiny checklist, a Y or an N on each line with what HGVault already knows shown beside it, and the transport manager can countersign as a second signatory. A signed sheet never changes. A mistake is voided with the reason and the name of whoever voided it, and the original stays on file. Sheets print as PDFs laid out like the familiar paper sheet, with the brake printouts included or left off if you file the originals.

Trailers and outside workshops

Trailers are inspected to the manual’s trailer items with their own tyres and brake test, and the trailers page has the detail. When an outside workshop inspects on its own sheet, the office records it from their report. Anything the report leaves out is raised as a question for the contractor, and it counts as the planned inspection, marked as recorded from the contractor’s report wherever it appears.

How it feeds the self-check

The maintenance investigation self-check uses the same examiner-style checks to report records not fully completed, along with late inspections and VOR cover, how far ahead the planner runs, and wheel and tyre management.