I tried an experiment this week. My old BSA motorcycle needed a new clutch – it had been playing up for a while and was getting so bad the old girl would soon have become unusable – so I took steps towards repairing it. However, instead of simply disappearing with the motorcycle and my tool chest into some quiet corner of the workshop, I tried something new. I sat down and created a spreadsheet. And, once it was completed (and an outline and schedule of work was laid out before me, costing analysis included) I gathered a few like minded people around and we had a discussion. All in all it took several hours. I slumped into my armchair that night tired, but although my eyes were sore from glaring at all those rows of figures, I was able to take comfort in the knowledge that my time that afternoon had been fully occupied.
The following day I went to the old motorcycle and found the clutch as bad as it had been the day before. In the cold light of day I wasn`t particularly surprised: why should it have been any different? No work had been done on the vehicle itself; no proper effort had been applied to the actual problem. I drew my conclusions and noted the result of my experiment, not on a spreadsheet or any other sheet for that matter - no, within my mind I understood. Administration should support action, not dictate it. I should have made a decision about the best way to progress and then got on with the job. An engineer`s approach: a physical solution to a physical problem, not an illusion created by administration.
The administrator’s language is unmistakable. `I`m calling a meeting`, they will say, as if announcing the unveiling of something tangible, commercial, viable. `Best Practice`, `Fit for Purpose`, their maxims are endless. Their justification is the pursuit of the ideal; the result is purely imaginary apart from an all consuming paper chase. The administrator creates their own workload, gradually building, creeping over time, so that no one notices the extent of the change taking place. They bolt bureaucratic layer upon bureaucratic layer, until the illusion is complete. A system that is an entity of its own – one that`s far too busy being itself to actually support anything else. A self serving sphere of delusion. A sole occupation that`s convinced of its own usefulness and, because of the gradual nature of its infestation, one that deceives all – including the administrator.
The worst thing is that we are all potential administrators at heart – we have an inbuilt gene that makes us want to order and organize. But like all instinctive behaviour, the manifestations are not always logical and despite my experiment convincing me otherwise, I still love doing things that I know don`t really need doing. I can`t help myself, they`re just there, begging for my attention. I play around with my laptop`s systems instead of getting on with the job in hand, the tasks I bought the thing for in the first place. All of us are susceptible to the draw of administration over practicality. I once worked with a bloke who was a bit of a hi-fi nut; he read all the magazines and by all accounts had a pretty expensive system at home. (He was also, significantly, a real hands-on engineer.) But when I asked what sort of music he enjoyed, he looked at me as if I was some kind of idiot. It was all about the system: a complex virtual world of perfect settings and specifications – in other words, administration.
It`s probably no surprise that we are governed by administrators: men and women who pour out legislation in the belief that some sort of order can be achieved. In truck driving alone, requirement is being heaped upon requirement, each addition supposed to improve quality but in reality just adding unnecessary burden. And as my little experiment showed, we would be far better off with a balance tipped towards physical solutions rather than imaginary ideals. But not everyone understands the real nature of pragmatism. Most government ministers seem to have been raised in a hierarchy that instills self belief and confuses the retention of obscure facts with intelligence. Many are barristers and when they see a system it`s not as a predictable or mechanical entity but as an abstract. Their misjudged conjecture, in my opinion, should be replaced by something far more certain.
Driver CPC is a typical example of the inappropriate application of abstract conjecture. Drivers don`t need to know the details of tachograph legislation, they simply need to understand the small part that applies to them. A tipper driver in London doesn`t need to get his head around ferry journeys; a transcontinental haulage driver doesn`t need to know the extensive list of exemptions. I don`t believe any driver needs patronizing for seven hours learning that if he drives on the throttle and brakes all the time it`s not good. In the long term, all that CPC is likely to do is create a shortage of drivers; experienced drivers and rookies alike put off by the irrelevant obstacles they need to negotiate in order to maintain a licence.
All legislation has the potential of becoming abstract in the end - because it relies on compliance, a blind deference to bureaucracy, good or bad - especially when it`s the good guys who suffer by bearing the cost of increasing administration. You don`t need a driving licence or tachograph driver card to drive a 44t artic, you only need them to be legal. Legislation gives the impression of control but it will never control all drivers, only those who participate in its scheme. The engineer`s solution would be to shift the emphasis away from the driver and concentrate on controlling all vehicles; the logic of it is irrefutable, a quantum leap in thinking taking us from uncertain to certain. There will be paperwork to sort out, there always is, but that`s what administrators are for – to implement decisions already made.
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