Speaking from my experience working in the ski industry where there is tracked machinery (groomer/snow cats and excavators) and loaders, staff have always gone through an internal pre-season training and competency assessment, even if they worked back to back winters between hemispheres. Same thing with snowmobiles.

A risk assessment, identifying the frequency of work, machine, terrain, operators etc should assist with developing a training and competency plan. We implement something similar with our utv training plan and we do that all internally, as per the risk assessment of activities.

I have wheel and track endorsements, and the last time I operated anything remotely close to one of those machines was 5 years ago... I would hope to be trained and assessed before operating one of those machines again, despite having an endorsement that says I'm ok to do so.

Thanks for that Alex. I haven't yet found many organisations that routinely assess competency, most appear to rely on the license endorsement - but as you rightly raise, this does not guarantee the skills to do a specific task.

In a previous job, we completed vehicle-specific competency assessments every year, which was very time-consuming and I believe it came from someone at Worksafe telling the company that they needed to show competency every year, and this was the companies way of ticking that box.

The expectation is that operators of all plant used for commercial purposes will have the appropriate licence and be assessed for competency for the reason Alex gave above (i.e. qualification does not = competency). I'll try and give a run down of what we do in civil construction...

The question is what would be reasonable in terms of competency assessment for each driver?
If you take a quick look around the interwebs you'll see a variety of assessment templates. These are usually based on reasonable activity that the operator would be likely to face while operating the machine (ground conditions, type of task (pushing up vs loading out etc), pre start, emergency response etc etc etc) - It's not usually a half-page tick and flick exercise.

A good assessment will also have a rating scale for the driver, 1: being something like 'needs direct supervision' through to say 5: Expert. Able to assess others.

Does each driver need to be assessed on each type of machine they drive (ie digger, tractor, truck) or should they be assessed separately for each type of machine?
CTO per piece of plant is something that has become a standard 'best practice' in civil construction. (yes, some companies even do the Ride on Mower CTO)


Frequency of assessment - I've seen some places conduct an assessment annually, is this too frequent? or not enough? Would a one-off assessment be enough?
I guess ongoing assessments are like CPD... you need to show that you are maintaining a level of competency. The frequency of re-assessments is up to the company. In most of the cases I know of, the auditors and clients are only comparing what is written in a procedure/policy/plan with what the company is doing in the real world.

In the assessment rating there is often a reassessment recommendation.
1 = reassess in 1 month, to 5 = reassess in 3/4/5 years.
Most operators get to Level 4 - able to operate without supervision. Reassess in 2 years (or something)

Pros and cons of assessments conducted in house versus external provider?
This is a bit curly as for independance you'd think external is the way to go, but a lot of external assessors have shied away from CTO assessments because they can't physically see the operator working in all the conditions they'd need to, to be confident of what they were signing off. For example, if a digger driver is being assessed excavating from a face on flat ground, the assessor can't assess how they dig a trench. To have an external assessor take the four-five hours over several different scenarios per operator would be uneconomic for a start.
(Hmmm... I have an idea - anyone have an old quarry they want used as a sandpit?)

A-hem... anyway...
Bigger companies have dedicated trainer/assessors who are constantly moving between sites observing and training/assessing. Smaller companies chose one or more of their experienced operators as the assessor. These are often the ones with good techniques who are also know the other operators so have a history of a variety of situations on which to do the assessment.

I know that was a blog post (sorry) but that's what I've found over the last few years :)

Thanks for your reply Rachael - and the time you put into it, much appreciated and helps heaps :)