About The Checker Leadership Team
Dave Lefevre and Shawn Macpherson founded Devtra Inc. in 1989 to provide training and consulting across a range of industries, with a focus on equipment operations, material handling, inspections, maintenance, safety, and compliance.
In 2000, Devtra launched The Checker, which has become the most comprehensive and effective inspection checklist system in existence—having been used to conduct more than 13 million inspections by companies of all sizes and types throughout North America.
To further its mission of making equipment inspections a competitive advantage for its customers, Devtra premiered its SaaS inspection management system in 2011, allowing The Checker’s field-proven Checklists to be used digitally and enabling more-efficient inspection management.
In addition to The Checker, Devtra continues to provide training and consulting services to preferred clientele.
The Checker: Filling a Need
Our president, David Lefevre, explains why and how The Checker was created.
I learned about the value of equipment inspections early in my career, working as a millwright to ensure that industrial machinery ran correctly. I witnessed firsthand how inspections were usually done grudgingly and inadequately, making it more difficult and costly to maintain the equipment.
Since we began helping companies improve their equipment operations and by material handling, we’ve seen the same attitude toward equipment inspections. They’re commonly viewed as a hassle—as “bureaucratic” paperwork that doesn’t have anything to do with “getting the job done.” Employees grumble about inspections. Pencil whipping is common. All too often, the inspections aren’t even performed.
This attitude leads to unnecessary costs and significant risks. But to begin to change the perception of equipment inspections, we knew a better inspection system was needed, built around checklists that were equipment-specific, intuitive, simple, and accurate.
In 1997, I began talking to hundreds of safety mangers, maintenance managers, government inspectors, equipment operators, and customers to develop practical inspection checklists that had never been created before, for specific pieces of equipment in numerous industries.
The result is The Checker. We designed The Checker methodology to actually help workers in the field in a way they’ll appreciate, without slowing them down—making it possible for our customers to gain the many cost-saving and safety benefits of a quality inspection program.
With the introduction of our digital inspection management solution, The Checker is poised to continue its transformation of how inspections are conducted. We are evolving the process of equipment inspections to empower our customers to make better business decisions, lower maintenance costs, increase equipment longevity, and reduce injury and non-compliance risk.
