PAS125 requires that repair tasks, carried out by staff that are not fully qualified, are supervised by fully qualified staff.
What this means is that, within each discipline of VDA, MET, PAINT & PANEL, the qualified members of staff must ensure that the task is carried out in accordance with the requirements of PAS125 and company procedures.
In practice, this would normally consist of a brief conversation before, during and after the repair task has been carried out. The qualified technician will be checking that the vehicle and parts are well protected, work instructions match tasks carried out, methods are available and followed, any deviation from methods are authorised and fully documented and that the QC stage is properly documented.
Each qualified technician can supervise tasks being carried out by up to three other technicians within that discipline. This means that the repairer must ensure that one in four technicians is fully qualifed within each discipline (including Estimating).
The inspector will not accept a signature or initial on job documents as evidence that direct supervision has been carried out. He or she will want to see evidence of it on the workshop floor. He will gather this evidence through observation and by questioning the technicians.
Clearly, if a qualified technician is not aware of tasks being carried out by unqualified staff that he is supposed to be supervising, or an unquailied technician says that the tasks he carried out were not supervised, then the inspector would be obiliged to raise a non-conformity.
