5 Common Threads in Many Transport Facilities I’ve Inspected

After inspecting transport facilities across Australia and New Zealand — from container yards and freight depots to distribution centres and ports — you start to see the same patterns, regardless of company size or industry sector.

They’re not unique to “bad” operators, and they don’t happen overnight. They creep in slowly, until one day a near miss, serious injury, or regulator’s visit shines a spotlight on what’s been ignored.

Safety Creep — The Slow Drift Towards Danger

Safety creep is the gradual erosion of safe work standards over time. It happens when a procedure is bent “just this once” to get the job done faster… and that bend becomes the new standard.

Examples I’ve seen:

• Yard speed limits are routinely ignored because “nothing happens when I do.”

• Exclusion zones quietly reduced to fit in more vehicle movements.

• Pre-start checks are being skipped because “the equipment was fine yesterday.”

Individually, these seem minor. Collectively, they’re how safe workplaces quietly become high-risk.

Normalisation of Deviation — When Unsafe Becomes “The Way We Do It”

When people stop seeing a deviation as unsafe, it’s been normalised. Pallets block the pedestrian walkway? “It’s always like that.” Forklifts operating in mixed pedestrian zones? “Everyone knows to keep an eye out.”

Once unsafe has been accepted as usual, your risk profile changes completely — and often invisibly.

Traffic Management Plans — Poor, Inadequate, or

Non-existent

If there’s a single recurring weakness in transport facilities, it’s traffic management. The most common issues I see:

• Plans written years ago, never reviewed, and no longer match the site layout.

• Generic “off-the-shelf” documents with no relevance to actual vehicle and pedestrian movements.

• No documented plan at all — “we all know how it works.”

Even where plans exist, they’re often:

• Outdated after yard changes.

• Impractical, so they’re ignored.

• Sitting in a binder instead of driving daily operations.

Supervision That’s Absent or Ineffective

The best plans in the world mean nothing if there’s no one ensuring they’re followed.

Too often, supervisors are:

• Offsite, relying on trust that rules are being followed.

• On-site but buried in admin work.

• Embedded in the same shortcuts and unsafe habits as the crew.

Without visible, safety-literate supervision, non-compliance becomes inevitable.

Reactive, Not Proactive, Safety Culture

Many facilities operate in a reactive mode — fixing problems only after a near miss, injury, or enforcement action. Proactive hazard identification, meaningful consultation, and regular risk reviews are rare, and without them, hazards continue unchecked.

The Takeaway

These five threads feed off each other. Safety creep encourages normalisation of deviation. Weak or missing traffic management compounds both. Poor supervision allows unsafe practices to spread. And a reactive safety culture leaves them all to fester until the regulator — or worse, an incident — forces change.

If you recognise even one of these patterns in your facility, you don’t have a minor compliance gap. You have the same DNA as every non-compliant transport operation I’ve ever inspected.

The fix is simple in concept but challenging in practice:

• Audit the reality of operations, not just the paperwork.

• Challenge “the way we’ve always done it.”

• Keep traffic management plans alive and relevant.

• Put competent supervisors where the work is happening.

• Build proactive safety into your operational DNA.

The cost of ignoring it won’t just be a fine — it’ll be the erosion of your safety reputation, operational efficiency, and the well-being of your people.