Randall Reports

The following is an article I wrote for an IPENZ website. I thought it might be a great way to start my blogging career, and will let you learn a bit about me and my company…….

Randall and Associates, a mechanical engineering consultancy, employed me after I had completed a BE(Hons) in Mechatronics from Massey University. In the final months of my degree I was job searching and it wasn’t a matter of finding a job, but choosing the one I liked the sound of the most. With Randall and Associates specialising in the heavy vehicle industry and earth moving machinery, I was drawn to this type of consultancy.

When I began, I joined a team designing a fatigue towbar tester. This projects purpose was to mechanically test towbar designs (simulate the life of towbar in hours not years) before they were mass produced. Signal processing, linear displacement, force measurement, hydraulic monitoring and controlling as well as data acquisition and processing were all involved throughout design, manufacture and support for this project.

Other projects include heavy vehicle chassis design, towing connections, truck and trailer bodies, excavator, roller, bulldozer, grader roll over protection structures, cab risers, falling object protection, operator protection, and body protection for the use of general contractors and for the use forestry applications. Theses projects require design by 2D and 3D modelling, finite element analysis and hand calculations. The forwarding of information to clients requires manufacturing drawings to current and relevant standards.

Working for a consultancy allows me to utilise the knowledge obtained at university and the knowledge I am forever learning in the workplace, combined with the latest software packages and the knowledge of my colleagues to provide my clients with the best solution to their engineering problem.

Working in a consultancy allows diversity throughout my career. With Randall and Associates having fewer than 10 employees we have become adaptable to clients needs. This allows us to become multi skilled in our industry and with customers coming up with more and more challenging circumstances, the expectation for designs to meet their needs grows. The variety of tasks enables me to be forever learning, this is shown by the commitment of the management at Randall and Associates by sending myself and other staff on career furthering block courses to stay one step ahead of the opposition.

When Randall and Associates is approached to solve an engineering problem and I become involved in the solution, a degree of satisfaction and accomplishment is achieved when the project is completed. Direct contact with the clients throughout the projects allows no miscommunication and my job becomes more than just engineering but project and time management. For all this my job never becomes stagnant and the rewards for constant customer approval and satisfaction keep the job enjoyable.

I recently received a phone call recently from an irate client who started by yelling “I’m not going to honour the cheque I have sent you, I’ve put a stop on it”. Oh! Aaah why is that? I replied.  Apparently this client had rung a week or so earlier and requested if one of our engineers stop by his establishment (35mins or 55 Km away) to advise him if he could adapt the drawbeam currently fitted to his truck to another configuration.

Our engineer duly combined 4 or 5 jobs in the area and called on this client. He examined the truck in question, took a series of photos, measured things up and made a sketch and carried on his way. All this took about half an hour in the yard.

On return to the office, our engineer did a registration check which verifies things like GVM, Tare Weight, ownership, current mileage etc all necessary info needed to certify the truck with. He made toll calls and faxes to the origional designer and certifier of the drawbeam, same to the engineer who manufactured and installer of said beam, He then carried out a series of hand calculations to verify the ability of the bolts and material used. This required a quick CAD drawing to set out bolts etc accurately.

At the conclusion to all this, the engineer provided a comprehensive 2 page written technical report to the owner outlining the failure of the drawbeam to meet the specs and offer to redesign the equipment to meet the required standard. As the drawbeam still had some life left (as determined by the original cert) he also included an invoice to cover the time spent to date, knowing the owner would in all probability wait until expiry to do anything further. The invoice was for a total of 3 3/4hrs or $300( no travel I might add). All in all a pretty proficient and professional approach to the job by our engineer.

You can imagine my bewilderment 2 months, 1 invoice and 2 statements later to receive the clients call berating both the engineer and the company for charging so much for so little etc etc etc. My travel through the job file and talking to the engineer involved only told me that the engineer had done everything to give the client a frank professional diagnosis and a report that he could use anywhere in the future to rectify things. I complimented the engineer involved on his thoroughness and professionalism.

Sitting at my desk, getting more and more niggly as the day wore on, I wondered what this client expected of us and how he related to say his Doctor. I can imagine this guy going to his Dr with a bellyache. First off he has to go there, (no house visits these days), then he has to pay $70 for a 5 minute consultation (work that hourly rate out!!) and gets told to take an aspirin and a prescription to eat Quik-eze. You can guarantee the quack does not get a report from the patients mother (the manufacturer), or his father (the designer), [He may not have one of these on second thoughts] bet there were no photos of the affected area taken, no bolt check to verify if his nuts were loose and certainly no report given to explain that the curry the client had 2 days ago or the 6 Tui stubbies he had last night did absolutely nothing to relax a diameterly challenged sphinctre muscle. What if the Dr was wrong and it was only a tummy full of gas- would there be a stoppage of payment?- No-o-o-o-o sir, not silly Dr has it in bank already.

Same thing would apply if said client took his truck to the mechanic (notice the “took”)- again no house calls here either, the job would be passed to the apprentice who mysteriously gets charged out at A grade rates even though he knows diddely squat, can’t even spell camera let alone use one these days (such is the state of our education system-they do teach them different things though, we learnt to mow grass they now teach them to smoke it for gawds sake) Things are charged for that are not replaced, rag spanners tighten leaks etc.

In both these instances, I venture, this same client pays quietly but begrudgingly and carries on with life. WHY then does the poor old engineer cop all the flack from disgruntled customers. The engineer makes house calls, ensures everything complies with legislation, materials comply with design specs, provides an interest free overdraft facility to creditors and a self taken time payment service as well. He endeavours to keep his clients operating so they do not suffer financially, doesn’t go off to golf every thursday etc and generally tries his damndest to keep his costs down to clients.

SO WHY MUMMY, IS THE ENGINEER TREATED DIFFERENTLY?

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Brakes used to simply stop a vehicle, they are now an important component of an active safety system. Does the new Brake Rule go too far too soon, when in NZ, from what I have read and seen, the major problem is do the brakes work at all?

Trucks are driven fundamentally different to cars, in that that they are almost never driven on their brakes - almost always coasting to a stop, and only being applied in an emergency situation or final stopping. Powerful electromagnetic, or hydraulic, or less common now, exhaust brakes, provide the majority of the retardation required for a heavy motor vehicle (hmv).

The new brake rule was fully implemented on the 1st July 2008 - basically the idea of the rule is that a hmv individually or in combination must be able to stop efficiently whether empty or fully laden. The rule has no grandfather rights, meaning ALL hmv’s modified now must comply with this requirement.

Things such as wheel base alterations will require certification to the brake rule as the amount of weight transferred to the vehicle’s front axle will change under stopping. The difficulty is that in order to achieve certification to the rule, almost all vehicles (if not all) will require either load sensing brakes or ABS - meaning a considerable additional cost when modifying a vehicle. The same will also apply for the fitting of a drawbeam if trailer brake gear does not come as part of the truck package.

From what I have seen, from the 1st Jully the fitment of new drawbeams to old trucks has stopped, so also has wheelbase alteration or axle configuration alterations.

If you are going to purchase a second-hand truck, REALLY IMPORTANT - select a vehicle which is the closest fit to the vehicle that you need - don’t expect, as of right, to be able to alter the vehicle afterwards.

If you plan to modify a truck for whatever reason, VERIFY FIRST that the brakes are able to be set up to comply with requirements. I do not know whether it is possible to fit ABS brakes to all makes & models - I have heard figures of 5k for ABS truck kits, then there is brake relining & certification on top of that.

From our point of view, the cost of certifying a brake modification for a new vehicle with information from the manufacturer is $750 - for a second-hand vehicle, our best estimate is $1500. Based on workflow prior to July 1st, we would have anticipated a couple of wheelbase alterations to old trucks & a few drawbeams fitted to second-hand Japanese imports. Since this date, we have seen several new vehicles, but no inservice vehicles.

What does this all mean? I suspect it means the end of truck modifications as we used to know them.

Truck handling systems, like cars, have become more sophisticated and the vehicle brakes are an active component of the vehicle’s safety system - and this cannot be altered willy nilly.

Whether, when all factors are considered this added compliance burden will be beneficial to the NZ economy as a whole (and, in my view, this is the real question) - I don’t know. I am aware that the most fundamental problem for inservice heavy motor vehicles is whether the brakes operate at all and this has to be addressed first.

Are we simply becoming busier and busier doing things that the world doesn’t care about?? The cynic in me says there is a risk that active vehicle safety systems for trucks will only guarantee that the crashes, when they do occur, will be at worse because they will be at a higher speed. Driver’s have to drive within the vehicle’s limitations and not use these new active safety systems for getting from A to B quicker.

We invite and encourage comments. If you would like to comment on this post - or suggest a new item for discussion, please click on the (No) Comments link below. It’d be great to hear what you are thinking!