CheckedSafe Complete Compliance Solutions

Complete Compliance Solutions

From a light bulb moment and a pencil and paper map of a structure – CheckedSafe was created – a vision by Gary Hawthorne and Darran Harris on how the future of compliance within the transport industry should be.

Born out of many years of both working in Transport Darran as a litigation Solicitor and Gary as a Transport professional for over 30 years.

Since 2014, CheckedSafe has provided a simple and inexpensive compliance solutions that can be tailored to each client with bespoke templates to check ANYTHING. Established by Gary Hawthorne and Darran Harris, CheckedSafe is a SaaS platform compliance provider providing mobile apps on IOS and Android along a webbased management reporting system that is multi-functional and secure utilising AWS servers as the cloud provider.

The CheckedSafe system offers organisations a complete solution, enabling them to manage and protect their workforce and comply with legal compliance requirements whilst reducing cost and liability. “We can provide you will a fully integrated solution - you can be completely paperless - by using our system properly you will have a legally defensible product. We bespoke templates on the app to suit individual requirements” said Gary.

Gary and Darran are both North West lads Gary from Horwich near Bolton and Darran located in Burnley, where they have set up the head office in the centre of Burnley. That said the system is global and can be accessed from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection, the app itself works off line and on-line so there is no restriction on using the app.

Both Darran and Gary’s individual expertise has resulted in CheckedSafe being a nationally recognised company.

Gary started life as a young Farmer, moving into Hotels before settling his career in Transport at 27 for Stagecoach, before moving to Transport for Greater Manchester (formerly GMPTE) where he spend 13 years “learning” from a government side about Transport – working within Passenger Transport Information – Traveline UK – Government White Paper 1999 with the Deputy Prime Ministers office – Gary finished his career as a Civil Servant connecting travel data across Europe to provide Smart Travel Plans in real time for travellers across Europe. 2006 Gary too the opportunity to leave TfGM and try his hand at operating his own bus company – by 2010 he had 40 buses 100 staff had won local business of the year in Bolton – in 2013 Gary decided to exit the business by selling the company and moving into compliance as he felt that was the future for him.

A CPC holder for both PCV and HGV, a Fellow of Chartered Institute of Transport, Fellow of both Society of Engineers and Institute of Road Traffic Engineers and hold a BSc in Transport Management – Gary has probably forgot more than most know in transport.

Whilst setting up CheckedSafe – Gary undertook to get qualified as a DVSA Examiner and Quality Auditor as he felt this was a great addition to his portfolio of skills and can offer a client a complete solution. It also meant that when CheckedSafe was taking off client has the knowledge that CheckedSafe guys were professionals in their business world and can relate directly with operators needs and issues.

Darran who is 7 years younger than Gary (but not near as good looking) started life working for the foreign office but quickly realised he was not going to be the next James Bond (he couldn’t reach the pedals of the Aston) – took to becoming a Solicitor – the next 7 years he spent obtaining his qualification at Salford and Manchester Met – qualifying as Legal Executive in 1996 and finally as a Solicitor in 1998 – the next 20 year Darran worked on litigation cases across many areas one of which was for TNT undertaking ground breaking litigation In the credit hire and credit repair field.

Darran had several high profile cases reported including cases in the court of appeal and supreme court – one of Darran’s legacies is he instigated what we all now know as a Bump Card with TNT.

Darran met Gary through his brother in-law who was Gary’s bank manager when Gary was looking to sell the bus company – they hit is off and realised they had very similar work ethic and values and both had transport background.

CheckedSafe was created! They worked tirelessly with in-house development team and marketing team to launch the initial product in 2015 – they went on the road selling to everyone over the next 3 years. It was madness they would spend 2-3 days a week away covering as many leads as possible then late nights in hotel writing up the deals. Behind all this the developers were busy rolling new features each month to improve the solution.

Both Darran and Gary made sure staff and developers got paid they took almost nothing feeding the business with their enthusiasm and vision – by April 2018 they has 1,000,000 checks in the system – they had a party ……… and then started to take a wage at last.

The next 4 years April 2018 – April 2022 saw the company grown exponentially from 1,000,000 to 12,000,000 checks so 11,000,000 checks in 4 years and over 500,000,000 data points in the system across over 5000 depots.

CheckedSafe has a range of services from vehicle compliance solutions, compliance and regulations, risk assessment and incident reporting tools via the App that enables them to offer the client a complete solution. Gary explained, “We constantly develop our product from user feedback. We release new features at least every quarter and a new app probably every four months depending on what features we have developed. Customer feedback is critical to us, we know a lot about transport, but the end users have great ideas that we take on board and use to develop free of charge and push out to the CheckedSafe community.” 1Unlimited daily checks with all of the various controls that we have. We can also update the checks to give you Covid-19 checks for such things as sanitising vehicles etc.

2Bespoke templates for any piece of kit including plant equipment.

3Full maintenance solution. This allows scheduling your PMI’s. Brake Roller Tests, LOLER check etc. The system provides the ability to either do the check digitally or if you prefer use manual PMI sheets and upload them to our system and we will digitise them so you can be totally paperless.

4Unlimited document storage either for vehicles/assets or users.

5Unlimited users.

6Full message service (back office to App users- useful for things like briefings and toolbox talks etc). This has proved very popular during the lock-down period as it allows you to communicate with all of your staff.

7Documents-to-App service whereby the customer can push documents to the user via the App. Useful for certifications, dig-tickets, access documents. Covid-19 briefings etc.

8Reminder service for things like servicing, maintenance, MOT’s Insurance etc. This will provide a weekly-to-do list to allow you to keep on top of the whole compliance provisions for the business.

9Trend Report to show things like: 9.1 Most common defect 9.2 Drivers not reporting defects 9.3 Drivers with repeat defects for the same issues 9.4 Time taken from defect being reported to repair/rectification etc 10Full cloud based solution so you can operate the system from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. 11We are a full accredited and validated DVSA IT ER Systems Provider. 12We are endorsed by the Fork Lift Truck Association and Border Force Agency. 13All our software belongs to us and we do not need to licence parts of it from others. I know a lot of our competitors bolt on other people’s software to their own which introduces a vulnerability. www.lancmag.com

PE ERFECT FOR

HGV walkaround checks HG

Van daily checks Van

Vehicle pre-use checks Veh

FORS checks FOR

Plant & equipment checks Plan

Forklift checks Fork

PCV checks PCV

MOT/Tax/Loler remindersMO

CheckedSafe’s web-based reporting system is accredited by DVSA and the FLTA and utilised across all fleet types of HGV, PCV, VAN, plant or utilities. If it needs a checklist, CheckedSafe can digitise and catalogue it, providing you with a cost-effective compliance solution.

With much of the industry yet to explore, over five million commercial vehicles in the UK and over 20 million pieces of plant, there is a huge market for CheckedSafe to expand into.

“Our plan is to furrow into the fleet industry and develop new features, and if from this market we get new ideas then we will look to develop them further. We have recently developed our API to link with Dynamic 365 for a large crane operator which will come into development later this year/early 2022,” stated Gary.

We have lots of developments in our pipeline – some very exciting that will be real game changers. • Job Cards

• Driver License Checked

• Domestic Hours Recording

• And many more

Despite COVID-19, CheckedSafe has managed to outsource all marketing resulting in an increase in in-bound enquiries. Utilising platforms such as Zoom and Teams, less time has been spent travelling and more focus has been on growing the business from home. This has resulted in growing 3x in size over the last two years.

They have also recruited additional staff all from industry so boosting the knowledge and expertise so whoever calls they should be confident in the knowledge that whoever they call from the CheckedSafe team they will have an understanding of transport and compliance

Eight years ago, CheckedSafe was an idea, that today, has flourished into a fully successful business. Gary and Darran are passionate about what they do and provide a skill set that boasts professionalism and expertise.

“We know our industry and our clients have an immediate infinity with us and put faith in us,” said Gary.

If you would like to find out any further information, please see the details below:

N 01282 908429

E info@checkedsafe.com

D www.checkedsafe.com