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Edition 476 – Useless Inspections

Written by Dean Robinson.

We own a factory unit in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. There’s a requirement to have a fire inspection undertaken six monthly, which means they need you on-site, so they can go about their regular tests.

In the time we’ve owned the property, there’s been four inspections. Here’s how they’ve gone:

  1. Inspection 1 – two individuals from the relevant fire inspection service, attended site, communicated with me at the beginning and end of the test, then, at the completion of the test, indicated I was free to lock up. Six weeks later, I receive a grumpy email from the strata manager, chastising me for not being present when the fire inspection was due, and demanding that I make myself available for a second inspection. After some to-and-fro, I was able to convince them that I was present on the day, and that a re-inspection wasn’t necessary.
  2. Inspection 2 – a different inspector this time. The inspection proceeds without any issues.
  3. Inspection 3 – yet another different inspector turns up, without any equipment and only his phone. He enters the premises, notes the Emergency Exit Light isn’t working, and advises he’ll document that in his report and arrange for a repair technician to attend site, and rectify. Nothing transpires and the EEL remains unilluminated.
  4. Inspection 4 – the fifth different individual attends site, undertakes the relevant tests, and when I remark to him that no one returned to repair the faulty EEL, he advises that as the power is not connected to the factory, the small life battery in the EEL would have expired some time ago. I ask why the previous inspector would not have known this, and a shrug of the shoulders is offered. Six weeks after the inspection takes place, another grumpy email from the strata manager is received, advising that I didn’t make myself available on the day scheduled for the fire inspection. We’re dealing with that, right now!

So, that’s a 75% strike rate in terms of poor service, poor systems, poor knowledge, or some combination of all three, taking place. In other words, a 75% failure rate.

We can blame inattentive staff, or inadequate systems, or lacklustre training for any or all of these things. However, in my opinion, it’s much deeper than that. There’s a major issue with the culture of this company. How do I know that? Well:

  1. None of the employees carry ID, even though they may wear the company shirt.
  2. None of them enter site with anything but a mobile phone. Perhaps they have an app based testing system. However, wouldn’t that be best completed on a tablet?
  3. None of them give the property owner or occupier, at the end of the inspection, confirmation, either in person, by email or by text, that the test has been completed.
  4. Of the five people that have attended site (two on the first occasion), none have made a repeat visit. So, where’s the site knowledge?

I’d also hazard another guess about this business – I reckon they’re not travelling so hot financially. How do I arrive at that assumption? When your team makes so many errors on site, it can’t be just our site that they’re making the errors on. Inevitably, it’s the tip of the iceberg in terms of inefficiency, which leads to cost overruns, which leads to an evaporation of profits.

If only the owners of this business, were out on site themselves, doing a follow up of what their employees are doing, to see just where they’re tearing up money, and their reputation, on almost a daily basis.

This Week’s Tip

“Often, these types of issues occur inside of businesses where the owners are completely disinterested,
and treat the business as a personal bank account, rather than something that should be nurtured.”