When Small Issues Can Lead to Systemic Issues, Management Systems Can Help

How a management system can help you to build a solid framework to manage this.

I went on holidays recently. My husband and I hired a motorhome. We had a great time, and it was so relaxing.

However, an auditors brain is never on holidays!

By the end of the week, we had quite a list of things that did not work on the motorhome that we're thinking should have been checked or picked up in their systems (if they had them). These were things like:

- the windscreen wiper fluid was empty - so nobody has been checking this?

- the waste tap was left on. So, the whole time we were driving our grey water was just coming out. Well, not the whole time. We discovered this a couple of days into the trip and promptly closed it.

- the main gas burner/ring was broken so we only had a small gas burner to use

- the couch inserts to build the bed didn't fit. They looked like they belonged in a different motorhome. So, we had to basically build our own bed from what we had which proved to be a little uncomfortable.

- the fire extinguisher was not compliant - there was not even a hose on it.

- the side sliding door would not close and the whole trip the 'door open' beeper was going off. A bolt fell completely out of the door on about day 2.

Each of these on their own seems quite minor, however, the fact that all of these were things that should be checked in regular return or release of the vehicle was a bit scary.

To me, if these things hadn't been checked, what else wasn't being checked? Was the vehicle safe and mechanically sound to drive? Now we didn't hire the motorhome from some backyard dodgy company, it was a well-known international brand, so I would have expected stricter checks in place. I know things do go wrong and expect a few minor things, but this list was quite long.

My subjective opinion was that there was potential that there was a systemic issue here.

This highlighted to me the importance of systems, the importance of monitoring and checking.

Now look they probably did have a prestart and a release checklist, but were they being used correctly or just a tick and flick? Were the completed checklists being sampled in internal audits? These types of issues are normally the start of something a lot bigger.

This is why a management systems is so important. Look, I’m not saying they are perfect and automatically mean nothing wrong happens, however they DO provide the framework to give it your best shot. If you’re using your system well these types of small issues should be picked up.

This experience has left so many questions for me… I’d love to get in there and audit their system!

What systems and checks have they got in place?

Who's checking that they actually work?

Are they being used?

This is an excerpt from Auditor Training Online Facebook live. The full version can be found here