The CSIR is staging two workshops in both Pretoria and Cape Town on a concept that is gaining increasing attention and popularity in South Africa – ‘Smart Trucking’ – more accurately referred to as Performance-Based Standards (PBS).
The Pretoria workshop is being held on July 7 – 8, 2016 at the Casa-Lee Country Lodge in Pretoria East while the Cape Town event is being held at Liberty Centre at Century City on July 11-12, 2016.
Based on successful initiatives in Australia, New-Zealand and Canada, the South African PBS pilot project was launched under the banner of Smart Trucks in 2007, offering an alternative means of heavy vehicle regulation. The PBS approach promotes vehicle safety and productivity.
Under the South African PBS framework, a proposed vehicle is required to pass 12 safety-governing standards and must be shown to cause less road damage than prescriptive (baseline) vehicles. The project currently comprises over 165 Smart Trucks from 14 commercial transport operators across South Africa, with a total of approximately 70 million kilometres travelled to date.
Smart Trucks have shown significant benefits over prescriptive vehicles, including a 70% reduction in crashes, a 14% reduction in fuel consumption and as result of increased payload efficiency, a saving of over 67 000 trips per year.
The course is intended for any person involved in the South African heavy vehicle transportation industry and will provide a high-level overview of PBS. This will include in-depth explanations of the 12 PBS standards, as per the Australian Performance-Based Standards Scheme administered by the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR). These standards will be presented interactively, with several group exercises.
The CSIR has managed to hit jackpot with its guest speaker, Les Bruzsa, chief engineer from the NHVR in Australia, who provides engineering, technical and policy leadership on the advancement of heavy vehicle productivity and safety initiatives, primarily through the continued development of PBS in Australia.
Bruzsa leads the continuous improvement of heavy vehicle regulations and standards in Australia and oversees a broad variety of engineering and technical activities within the NHVR. He also leads the end-to-end operation of the PBS Scheme, including the review, assessment and approval of PBS applications.
As if that were not enough to keep him busy, Bruzsa is also involved in a large number of special projects related to heavy vehicle productivity, access, safety, regulations and on-road operations. His accomplishments include computer simulation and evaluation of the dynamic performance of heavy vehicle configurations, investigations into stability, braking, safety and design of heavy vehicle combinations, accident analysis, reconstruction and investigation.
The CSIR’s Dr Paul Nordengen, PhD (Eng), Pr Eng, who has spearheaded the adoption and growth of the Smart Truck concept in South Africa – as well as spearheading and still serving on the steering committee of the Road Transport Management System (RTMS), will also be presenting, as will two other expert speakers.
The cost of each two-day workshop is R2800 per person (excluding VAT) and you can reserve your spot by clicking on this link: http://www.rtms-sa.org/content/smart-truck-pbs-registration-form.
