What is a journey management plan?
A journey management plan is prepared before a specific journey and answers four questions: which route the vehicle takes, when the driver rests, when the driver calls in, and what the journey manager does if contact is lost. A journey risk assessment goes with it and sets the controls and who approves the trip.
These plans are common among oil and gas contractors and companies working at desert or remote sites in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Oman, where a vehicle can travel hundreds of kilometers out of mobile coverage. This template gives you the printed plan for one journey and an Excel register where the journey manager follows every journey.
When do you need a journey plan?
Each company decides when a plan is required, and many energy-sector clients set this in their journey management standard. If your client has one, apply it. Without one, a plan is typically used for:
- Journeys out of town or above a distance or duration your company sets.
- Driving in darkness, on desert or graded tracks, or in areas without mobile coverage.
- Heavy or oversized loads, or carrying passengers to a work site.
- Convoys, or weather with expected dust, fog or extreme heat.
How to prepare a journey management plan step by step
- Plan the route with the driver on a map: rest, fuel and call-in points, the last point with mobile coverage and areas to avoid.
- Get the fit-for-duty declaration and fatigue self-check, and check the license and permits. Review recent hours in the daily driving and rest hours log.
- Check the vehicle with a walk-around on the vehicle inspection checklist, then record the summary in section 7.
- Assess the journey risks for likelihood and severity before and after controls, and read the risk level and approval from the matrix.
- Approve the plan and track call-ins. The vehicle does not leave before the required signatures, and the journey manager records each call-in as it comes.
- Close out on arrival with the actual arrival time, rest stops, missed call-ins and any near miss or route deviation.
How is the journey risk score calculated?
Each hazard is rated twice: before and after controls. The highest score after controls sets the level for the whole journey, because a journey is no safer than its riskiest stretch.
The bands, controls and approval levels are editable examples on the Risk matrix sheet: the journey manager approves Low, the supervisor joins for Medium, the operations or HSE manager for High, and an Extreme journey is not approved until the risk is reduced. Replace them with your company matrix or your client's journey management standard.
How do call-ins and the overdue procedure work?
The driver calls in at departure, at each checkpoint and on arrival. The journey log has one row per planned call-in, and its status comes from the as-of time and two limits on Settings:
The 15-minute grace and 30-minute escalation are example values. At Escalate, the journey manager follows the overdue procedure in section 4 of the plan: call the driver and the convoy, check the last position on the tracking system, inform the supervisor, then start the emergency response in your company plan.
Worked example: equipment move to a drilling rig
Journey JMP-002: a two-vehicle convoy moves equipment from the main camp to Rig 27, 310 km away, part of it on a sand track. Planned departure is 14:00 and arrival 22:30, so part of the trip is after dark.
- Duration: 22:30 − 14:00 = 8.5 hours. Rest stops required with a break every 2 hours: 8.5 ÷ 2 = 4.25, rounded up to 5, minus 1 = 4 stops.
- Night driving: 4 × 4 = 16 before controls, 3 × 4 = 12 after adding a second driver and live tracking.
- Sandstorm: 3 × 5 = 15, then 2 × 5 = 10. No mobile coverage: 4 × 4 = 16, then 2 × 4 = 8 with a satellite phone.
- The highest residual score is 12, so the level is High and the journey needs the operations or HSE manager's approval. Moving departure to the morning would remove the night-driving hazard.
- Checkpoint 2 called in 20 minutes late. Checkpoint 3, planned at 20:00, did not call in: it turned Overdue at 20:15 and Escalate at 20:30, and the journey manager started the overdue procedure.
Common journey management mistakes
- Signing the plan after departure. A plan approved while the vehicle is on the road prevents nothing.
- Call-in points inside no-coverage areas. Put them before coverage ends, or the call will be missed.
- An overdue procedure with no times. Write the minutes before each step and who calls whom.
- A risk assessment copied from the last trip. Route, time, weather and driver change, so assess each journey.
- Skipping the fit-for-duty declaration. A driver who slept four hours is a hazard however good the vehicle is.
- Closing out without lessons. A route where call-ins ran late once may do so again; record it so the next plan allows for it.
What the plan does not cover
This is a generic template based on common practice. It is not any client's standard and does not claim compliance with one. If your client has a journey management standard, apply it and adjust the sections, bands and times to match. Driving and rest-hour limits are set by local rules and your company policy, so check your authority's current requirement. The register cannot see where a vehicle is between two call-ins; that is the job of a tracking system. The template is a working tool, not legal advice.