New Duston Garage / The Perfect Week

The Perfect Week

The technicians, what type they are, and the work that suits them

The perfect week starts with knowing your people. You cannot feed the right work to the right person while the knowledge sits in three separate heads and gets argued out fresh every morning.

This is that knowledge written down. Eight technicians, the type each one is, the level, the brand, and the work that puts them in their flow.

Everything here comes from the meeting transcripts, chiefly the scheduling session of Tuesday 18 August. Where the transcripts do not answer a question, it says so rather than filling the gap with a guess.

Internal: Richard, Matthew, James, John v1.0 · 1 September 2026

Ground rules

The shared language

You cannot talk sensibly about people without an agreed way to describe them. The type is set by the most complex work the person can do. The level is speed and quality against the time you decide the job should take.

TYPE 1 MOT tester

Does MOTs in time, consistently. Roughly 45 minutes as an average across easy and hard.

TYPE 2 Tyre and alignment

More skilled than people assume. A 23 inch tyre onto a rim, heating a multi-link component enough to free it without cooking it, a wheel off without snapping a TPMS valve.

TYPE 3 Service tech

DTI gauge to measure runout on a hub, scan tool for a brake fluid change with ventilation where required, electronic handbrakes released, service lights cleared. In the right time.

TYPE 4 Repair tech

Timing belt on a 2 litre TDI. Subframe down, clutch in, back up and aligned.

TYPE 5 Senior tech

Everything a repair tech can do, plus attention to detail. Body off a Land Rover, and the bolts are still laid out in labelled trays when you walk to the bench.

TYPE 6 TE tech (diag)

Looks at a fault and tells you everything it could be plus the tests needed to find out, inside the hour.

1
15% too slow
Trainee
2
5% too slow
Trainee
3
On time
Competent
4
5% faster
Over
5
15% or more faster
Over

Anyone below a 3 is a trainee in that category. Anyone at 4 or 5 is overperforming. A person can hold several types and levels at once, and can be different again on a particular brand. Frisby is the clearest example of that in this team.

At a glance

The eight

A first pass, done out loud in the room on 18 August. Everyone agreed that is what it was. Click any name for the full picture.

Filter

Technician by technician

The full picture

What suits them, what to watch, and what not to give them.

Lawrence

TE tech level 2 · Senior tech level 5 · Land Rover
Where he sits

Named by the room as the most skilled technician in the business, and the one John described as the standard you would want most of the team to reach.

Work that suits him

Land Rover, and the heavy senior work. Land Rover days are a preferred day for Lawrence and Callum together, so batching the Land Rovers onto the same day serves both of them.

Watch for

On diag he gets to the answer but he has to think about it, and he does not always get there in time unless it is a Land Rover.

The room's own caveat on his level 5 was "if he applies himself".

Callum

TE tech level 3 · Senior tech level 4 to 5 · Land Rover
Work that suits him

Land Rover days alongside Lawrence. When the room was asked what work Callum can do, the answer was "everything", which is why the worry about him getting bored of repetitive work does not really bite. Give him range and it looks after itself.

Watch for

He does not hit time on diag. Ninety minutes of basic diag takes him longer than ninety minutes.

He is a new MOT tester, so allow an hour or a little more per test for now rather than the standard 45 minutes.

Do not give him

Plain servicing. Putting a service on a man who can do everything wastes the skill and leaves the hard job with nobody to do it.

Aaron

Senior tech level 3 to 4 · Generic
Work that suits him

Old vans and old mechanical work.

The exact words in the room were that Aaron is a pig in muck when he is on old vans and old mechanical stuff.

Work that does not

Flash new cars. He does not like them and he does not do them quickly. When the Q7 and the Alhambra had to go somewhere on the night, giving the newer car to Aaron was openly called the best of a bad bunch.

Watch for

He works old school by hand and does not like electric tools. It costs him time and it runs into overtime.

Joe

Senior tech, currently a trainee senior, level 2 to 3 · Generic
Work that suits him

General senior work. Nothing in the transcripts records what he actually enjoys, so this line is unfinished until somebody asks him.

Watch for

The room's view on the night was that his development has plateaued. It was also said that he has time to give, so a development conversation is worth having rather than assuming the position is fixed.

Marcus

Service tech level 1 across the board · Generic
Where he sits

He will take on cam belts and gearboxes and he does get them done, though not in the time, and that is as far as he goes at present.

Work that suits him

MOT and service on the same car. He tests it and goes straight into the service, and that shape of job is the right one for him. It also saves the second vehicle inspection, which is about 30 minutes, because the tester has already been over the car.

Watch for

When a job does not go to plan he needs support, and the failure mode is a job that does not start afterwards. He does learn from it.

He will work through lunch if he is asked to. Dial gauges were flagged as something he may not be confident with, which has not been trained or tested.

Frisby

Repair tech on VAG level 2 to 3 · Service tech otherwise level 2 to 3 · VAG
Where he sits

His real name is James Frisby, so on the schedule he needs distinguishing from James.

He is the only one making bonus on services, and he has made it once this year.

Work that suits him

VAG. He knows his way around ODIS very well and does cam belts on VW and Audi. The common one is the 1.4 TFSI at roughly 3 and a half hours, though the room's honest view is that one day it is 3 and a half and another day it is 6.

Watch for

He has said he gets the same jobs over and over again. That is exactly the complaint the perfect week is designed to answer, so it belongs in the conversation rather than in the tea room.

Charlie

Trainee · level not yet placed · Generic
Where she sits

She can service a car on her own and do discs and pads on her own. Her apprenticeship is finished.

Work that suits her

Services and brake work, to a standard that is checked. Not tyres: the room's view is that tyres take her too long.

Why she is a trainee and not a service tech

She has not been trained or tested on the DTI gauge, and a service tech has to be able to measure runout on a hub.

The disc assessment is also still developing. The test is not "did she change the pads", it is "will that disc still be above minimum thickness by the next scheduled visit", which needs the customer's mileage and the meat left on the disc.

The decision was to err on the side of caution rather than put someone under time pressure for work they have not been trained to do.

This one is not just about Charlie

The same test now has to be applied to everybody. Marcus and Frisby were both flagged in the same breath as not confident on dial gauges. What is the way this job should be done, did the technician do it, and did anyone check.

Matt Baker

MOT tester and service tech · level not yet placed · Generic
Where he sits

He can service, but effectively he is a full time tester.

Work that suits him

Tests, back to back, all day. Eight tests in a day is a full day for him and it does not take all day.

Do not give him

Repair work he cannot finish, particularly ahead of a day off, because it lands straight in carryover.

From the sessions

The rules that shape the week

These are what turn the profiles above into an actual schedule.

Give a technician flowNobody gets into rhythm on MOT, service, tyre, diag. Batch it. Understand what puts each person into their flow state, because that is when they are happy and quick.
Pick the job, then the person, then the timeThe time in the schedule is not the booked time and it is not the time sold. It is how long it will take that individual.
High GP work earlyWork that could become high GP work goes at the start of the day. Low GP work goes at the end. A puncture first thing wrecks somebody's flow.
Maximum four MOT-plus-service jobs a dayAnd never start one in the afternoon. The fourth lands at lunchtime and the service cannot start until after.
Three tests can run at onceTwo ramps plus the rolling road.
Spread the MOT-plus-service workAcross the people who can do both, rather than stacking every test on the one tester.
If it is on site, it is in the scheduleParts on site two days in advance. Carryover into the schedule the moment you know.

What is still missing

This document is half of the perfect week. It records what the three of you know about your technicians. It does not yet record what the technicians know about themselves.

The question that has not been asked, of anybody:

"What work do you love? If you could do nothing else all day long, what would it be?"

It is a collaborative conversation, not an announcement, and the sequence matters. Get the story right, get the plan together, decide what you are going to say to everybody, and then have the conversations. On the night that was put at a month or two away, not next week.

Frisby is the obvious first one, because he has already told you he is bored. Joe is the second, because nobody in the room could say what he enjoys.

Before this is finished

Open questions to settle

?Who actually holds a current MOT tester's licenceThe table names Matt Baker as the tester and Callum as a new one, but the room also said "these are all MOT guys as well" while going through Lawrence, Callum and Aaron, and separately confirmed there are three people who can do a service and an MOT. Get the real list written down.
?Nobody is placed as a tyre and alignment techCharlie was ruled out on speed. If tyres and alignment matter to the week, somebody has to own them.
?Levels for Aaron, Joe, Charlie and Matt need testing against evidence rather than memoryThe placements were a first pass done out loud in the room, and everyone agreed that is what they were.
?Marcus at level 1 across the boardThat is a trainee in every category on the sheet, which is worth a deliberate decision rather than leaving it as a scoring outcome.