Case Study: ISO 9001 Recertification – AJL Heavy Equipment & Marine

Case Study: ISO 9001 Recertification – AJL Heavy Equipment & Marine

Client: AJL Heavy Equipment & AJL Marine
Industry: Heavy Transport, Stevedoring, Marine Engineering
Locations: Tasmania (Burnie, Devonport, Hobart) & Victoria (Truganina, Port Melbourne)

The Challenge

AJL operates in high-risk, high-accountability environments—servicing critical transport and marine infrastructure across Australia. Their Heavy Equipment division maintains and repairs a wide range of mobile assets including:

• Prime Movers and Specialised Trailers: petroleum and chemical tankers, low loaders, container trailers, and car carriers
• Stevedoring Equipment: terminal tractors, container forklifts, and wharf-side handling machinery
• Marine Assets: including TT-Line’s Spirit of Tasmania passenger ferries

This work spans both scheduled servicing and 24/7 reactive repairs—covering diesel engines, fuel injection, auto-electrical systems, brakes, suspension, and fabrication. The stakes are high: a brake failure on a petroleum tanker or a structural fault in a car carrier ramp can have catastrophic consequences. And with prime movers often valued at over $450,000, protecting asset life is just as critical as ensuring safety.

The QMS Challenge

Unlike smaller “Mum and Pop” truck service providers who rely on a single generic job card, AJL services major national fleets and regulated industries—each with their own compliance and documentation requirements. This includes:

• TT-Line (Spirit of Tasmania) – requiring marine-class documentation and traceability
• A large national road transport company – with strict audit trails and fleet-wide servicing protocols
• A chemical transport company – whose acid tankers require suspension inspections tailored to high-specific-gravity loads
• A waste transportation company – operating in harsh environments, requiring additional hydraulic and contamination checks

Each of these clients provides their own Repair Order Templates, which must be integrated into AJL’s internal QMS workflows. This means AJL’s ISO 9001 system must not only meet its own standard and the ISO 9001 framework—it must flex to meet each customer’s unique compliance, asset-life, safety, and regulatory expectations.

Our Role

Evahan Group was engaged to guide AJL through its ISO 9001 recertification process. Led by Managing Director and Principal Consultant Jason Bresnehan, our support included:

• QMS Enhancements: Working with AJL’s senior leadership to implement meaningful improvements to their Quality Management System over the prior 12 months
• Internal Audit (Dry Run): Conducting a full-scope internal audit simulating the external assessment—reviewing the “QMS as a Whole” across all operational sites
• Gap Closure: Identifying and resolving non-conformances and improvement opportunities uncovered during the internal audit
• Customer-Specific Integration: Ensuring AJL’s QMS clearly defines, accommodates, and traces customer-supplied repair order templates, with quality gates tailored to each client’s risk profile
• On-Site Audit Support: Attending AJL locations during the external audit to provide real-time support and assist with auditor queries where appropriate

The Outcome

AJL successfully achieved ISO 9001 recertification—affirming its commitment to quality, safety, and continuous improvement. More importantly, its QMS now reflects the operational reality of servicing high-risk, high-compliance clients—where “meeting customer requirements” means more than ticking a box. It means engineering quality into every repair, every checklist, and every decision.