National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) CEO, Sal Petroccitto, reflected on the NHVR’s 10 years of operations at State Conference 2024.
Looking back, Petroccitto said the things the NHVR has done over the last 10 years have started to make a difference.
“What I think we’ve done over those 10 years is really engaged with the industry,” he said.
“We’ve attempted to listen wherever possible. We’ve attempted to make amends to a legislative framework that is complex, a legislative framework that’s still in its sixth year of trying to be amended.
“Now, if we had waited for that law to be amended, we wouldn’t have achieved anything. But the decision was made to work within the construct of that existing legislative framework to do things.
“Whether those things have been progressing what we can in the access space, continuing to evolve our position now that actually allows 2.55m vehicles to come in from European markets without having to be modified, or to allow you to buy equipment or technology that actually assists your business.
“In my view, I think they’d be beneficial in the role that we played in that space over those last 10 years.”
A highlight, Petroccitto said, has been the NHVR’s effort to fulfil its role as a single national regulator.
With Queensland transitioning its heavy vehicle regulation services to the NHVR as of 20 April this year, it will be one step closer.
“It seems like only yesterday, but it is 10 years that we’ve now been operational as an organisation,” Petroccitto said.
“And it will be 10 years in April that will allow us to actually fulfil our role as a ‘single national regulator almost’, because we have two jurisdictions that are still not part of the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL).”
Another key moment for the regulator has been the introduction of the NHVR Portal, which Petroccitto said has come a long way since its introduction.
“The NHVR Portal is now becoming a true business system where operators can actually utilise it to do everything they want to do, from managing defects to understanding routes to looking at their compliance history,” he said.
“So again, across that period of time, there’s been a lot of things that we’ve done – improving Performance-Based Standards (PBS), and many other things as well.”
The NHVR also realised that it needed to step into the space around safety and education campaigns, which saw it develop the We All Need Space and Don’t Muck with a Truck campaigns.
“We realised that it wasn’t just the heavy vehicle industry that needed a focus,” Petroccitto said.
“It was the other users of the road network that were requiring an element of education and contribution to better understand the way you operate around a heavy vehicle.
“It has been very pleasing to actually see the level of engagement that we’ve had from industry.”
Going forward, Petroccitto said the NHVR will look to continue investing and understanding the safety technologies that are starting to become available, as well as the adoption of systems and programs that allow driver activities and data to be made much simpler.
“For us, we fundamentally believe technology is a genuine enabler to safety and productivity,” he said.
“We also fundamentally believe that the two need to go hand in hand.”
Outside of this, the NHVR’s focus over the coming period will be to truly become the single entity responsible for all on-road vehicle productivity and safety components in the country.
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