Four bays, four of us, one diary
A workshop that books bays instead of mornings, and writes everything down while it is happening.
We started by counting how long cars waited
In the first year this garage worked the way every garage around it worked: people brought cars in the morning and we got through them. Then somebody kept a note for a month of how long each car actually sat before anybody touched it, and the average was two hours and forty minutes.
Those two hours and forty minutes were not work. They were a customer somewhere else wondering, and they were the reason half of our telephone calls were people asking whether their car had been started yet.
So the diary changed. Now the thing a booking holds is a bay, for a length of time, with your registration on it. Four bays, ninety minutes for a minor service, three hours for a major, two for brakes. The form shows what is genuinely free and sometimes that looks thin, which we did think about and decided we could live with.
The cards came from the same month of counting. Almost every disagreement at the office had been about what somebody was told on the telephone, so now the telephone call goes on the card with the time of it, and the customer takes the card home.
What we hold to
Measure, never estimate
Millimetres on the card, because a bit low means nothing next year.
Stop and ring
Work that grows beyond what was agreed stops until you have the new figure.
We refer rather than stretch
No bodywork, no paint, no gearbox rebuilds, and no roadworthiness signatures.
The four of us
Abdulla Firaq
Nineteen years under cars, eight of them running a fleet workshop. Writes the diary, makes the telephone call about every extra figure, and...
Hussain Nizar
Does most of the servicing. Measures rather than estimates, which is why the cards have numbers on them, and has never once written a bit lo...
Ismail Shafiu
Takes all four wheels off before he says anything about brakes. Keeps a worn pad and a new pad in the office drawer for the conversation.
Aishath Rifga
Holds the bay diary, orders the parts, files every job card under the registration, and is the person who can tell you what oil went in thre...
Book a bay
Ninety minutes for a minor service, three hours for a major, and a card on the windscreen either way.