New from Record360
Introducing 360AI. Protect your bottom line with AI-assisted, human-approved inspections.
New from Record360
Introducing 360AI. Protect your bottom line with AI-assisted, human-approved inspections.
Woking, Surrey, England, with a head office, garage facilities, and two main parking facilities
56 minibuses, from Peugeot Boxer to Maxus electric models, plus maintenance for more than 125 vehicles
Fleet maintenance and garage safety inspections
Woking Community Transport operates the Woking Bustler, a door-to-door dial-a-ride service for Woking Borough residents with reduced mobility or disabilities. The organization also provides hospital transport, special educational needs and disabilities home-to-school transport, minibus hire for community groups, and MiDAS driver training. Its fleet of 56 vehicles ranges from Peugeot Boxer minibuses to Maxus electric minibuses.
Behind the fleet is the WCT Service Station, which has handled MOTs, servicing, and repairs for 30 years. The garage maintains more than 125 vehicles, including minibuses for local charities and nonprofit organizations, and its profits help fund the Bustler service. Fleet Manager Neal Glass is responsible for keeping every one of those vehicles reliable, safe, and compliant for the passengers who depend on them.
Each minibus goes through a garage safety inspection every nine to 10 weeks, and vehicles fitted with passenger lifts also require checks under the U.K.’s Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations, known as LOLER.
For years, those inspections lived on paper. Technicians worked through a printed checklist, ticking off each item and writing down any issues they found.
Completed sheets then landed on the maintenance manager’s desk, where they waited to be reviewed and signed off.
That backlog created a blind spot. If a technician missed an item or completed a check incorrectly, no one would know until the paperwork was reviewed, sometimes days after the minibus had returned to service. By then, the only fix was to pull the vehicle off the road again.
The paper process also depended on one person. When the maintenance manager was on annual leave or away from the office, it was hard for anyone else to tell which inspections were finished and which were still outstanding.
Woking Community Transport worked with the Record360 team to build four custom workflows: one for its garage safety inspection and three for the different LOLER lift checks its vehicles require.
Getting the workflows right took some trial and error. Over about six weeks, the two teams tested different approaches until the process fit the way the garage works.
Glass’s biggest concern going in was whether his technicians would accept the change. Moving from paper to a tablet was the largest shift in how they had done safety checks in years. The team came around once they saw what it saved them.
Photo capture quickly became the feature the team leans on more and more. A paper sheet could only describe a defect. Now, technicians attach a picture of the problem directly to the inspection record.
Just over four months in, the biggest change is how quickly Woking Community Transport knows where every inspection stands. Instead of waiting on a stack of paperwork, managers can open Record360 and see what has been completed, when, and whether anything is missing.
That visibility means missed items are caught the same day, before a minibus is back out carrying passengers, and the need for recalls has dropped.
The maintenance manager has also gotten time back, and the process no longer hinges on him being in the office.
Woking Community Transport
For the charities and nonprofits whose vehicles the garage maintains, inspection results and defect photos now arrive faster and are easier to understand. For Glass, the decision was never about cost.
His advice to other fleet operators who find themselves bogged down in paperwork is simple:
Woking Community Transport Ltd is a community benefit society based in Woking, Surrey, England. It operates the Woking Bustler dial-a-ride service for residents with reduced mobility or disabilities, along with hospital transport, SEND home-to-school transport, community group minibus hire, and MiDAS driver training. Its WCT Service Station has provided MOTs, servicing, and repairs for 30 years, with profits helping fund the Bustler service.
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