Three ladders — Sales, Technician, Management — rewritten for Shopify POS and Bench. The old version trained people on Lightspeed, which goes dark at the end of October.
Charlie, Matthew and Jared are all T2. Bella and Lachlan are T0. Every brake adjustment, gear index, dropper post, Di2 setup, bar tape and pre-sale safety check in the building goes through Craig alone. He is here for every one of the five trading days — 8:30–5:30 Tuesday to Friday, 9–3 Saturday — so this is not a coverage gap; it is a ceiling. Workshop output cannot exceed one pair of hands, and Craig has no day off to give back if he falls sick or wants to race. Closing that gap — one person to T3, then T4 — is worth more than anything else on this page.
| Staff | Sales | Tech | With MC | Next rung |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charlie | S2 | T2 | 34 months | T3 Brakes — the priority |
| Matthew | S2 | T2 | 30 months | T3 Brakes — the priority |
| Jared Havemann | S3 | T2 | returning | S4 Products & Freight |
| Bella | S0 | T0 | 11 months | T1 Prep Build — assessable in a week |
| Lachlan | S0 | T0 | not started | T1 Prep Build |
Charlie has been here 34 months and Matthew 30, and both sit at S2/T2 — the same rung on both ladders. That is not two people plateauing independently. Every ladder said "staff must self-initiate an assessment request", so the only trigger for progression was someone asking. Nobody asks. That rule is removed below.
Every ladder used to end each level with "self-initiate an assessment request." That put the trigger on the person least likely to pull it, which is why two people sat on the same rung for three years. The request is gone. What replaces it is below — a fixed beat, a named signature, and a rule that makes standing still visible.
Four times a year, on the beat the shop already runs on — and the period when the long shifts happen, so there is something to look at. Queensland Catholic schools follow the state holiday blocks, so these dates cover both. 2026: 3–19 Apr · 27 Jun – 12 Jul · 19 Sep – 5 Oct · from 12 Dec. Nobody asks for a review; it happens. Anyone can still be signed off between reviews the moment the evidence is there — the beat is a floor, not a gate.
Each rung states what counts, and most of it Bench already records: job-card status tags, svc:rework against a bike that came back, whether a card reached Craig complete. Nobody has to perform an assessment — the last month of work already is one.
Technician levels need Craig and Kyle; Sales and Management need Kyle. A sign-off is one edit to the Levels tab of the shift sheet — that tab is now the register, and it is the only place a level officially exists.
The shift sheet reads the register directly. Pass Tech 1 and Build rows start offering your name; pass Sales 2 and Trade rows do. Progression now pays in hours, visibly, without anyone announcing it — which is the part that never existed before.
The level in the register is the only place capability is recorded, and everything else reads it: the shift sheet decides which shifts you may take, Bench decides which jobs you may be allocated, and this page says what to learn next. Change the level once and all three move. Nothing capability-related gets written down anywhere else.
If someone has not moved in two consecutive reviews, that is treated as a problem to answer, not a fact to note. Usually it means they are not being given the work that would let them progress — which is what happened here, and nothing in the old system was capable of noticing it.
The mechanical content is unchanged — a brake is a brake. What changed is the last step of every level: "notify Craig" was a verbal handover that left no record. It is now an update to the Bench job card, which means the work is finally visible and can be assessed without anybody scheduling an assessment. One thing to hold on to: a job card marked internal or $0 still has a real customer waiting on it — a first free service, a warranty job, a build. The only genuine exception is SVC-INT-SHOP, which is our own bike. Most of what follows is based on a high-volume kids' or entry-level mountain bike.
Every job card carries a technician, but the list it can choose from is craig, kyle, casual — three roles, not people. So a build by Charlie and a build by Bella are recorded identically, and the evidence this ladder relies on does not exist yet. Changing that list to names is a small edit with a large consequence: it makes every level below measurable instead of remembered.
| Level | Services it unlocks in Bench |
|---|---|
| T1 | SVC-INT-BUILD-STOCK — prep on stock bikes only, nothing customer-owned |
| T2 | SVC-TUBE · SVC-FITTING-FEE · SVC-INT-BOXING · SVC-BIKE-PACK |
| T3 | SVC-BRAKE-ADJUST · SVC-BRAKE-BLEED |
| T4 | SVC-GEAR-ADJUST · SVC-HANGER · SVC-CHAIN-OPT · SVC-BIKE-BUILD · SVC-INT-BUILD-ORDER · SVC-1STAR · SVC-2STAR · SVC-LABOUR |
| T5 | SVC-FIRMWARE · SVC-BB · SVC-HEADSET · SVC-HUB · SVC-WHEEL-TRUE · SVC-3STAR · SVC-4STAR |
| T6 | SVC-BARTAPE · SVC-TUBULAR · SVC-WHEEL-BUILD · SVC-NSD-SUSPENSION · SVC-RETUL · SVC-5STAR · SVC-RACESTAR · SVC-PRERACE-OPT · SVC-INT-WARRANTY |
Craig to correct this table. Which level each service sits at is a mechanic's judgement, not a manager's — the wheel, bearing and star services especially. What matters is that the list exists in one place and is derived from the level, rather than written out separately and left to drift.
svc:rework against them and nothing missing from a box. Assessable inside a week.Everything below this line is Craig, and only Craig. Five other people work on bikes and none of them can adjust a brake, so everything they build queues for his hands. That is why work banks up behind the workshop. Getting Charlie and Matthew to T3 is the single highest-value training move in the business.
Entry used to require all six Sales levels plus Technician level 4. The most senior person in the building is S2/T2, so on the old rule nobody became a manager for years — and meanwhile Kyle did all three levels himself. The gates below replace it, and are confirmed.
Every row on the shift selection sheet gets a class, and each row only offers the people qualified for it. The sheet enforces the ladder instead of ignoring it — so nobody allocates shifts, and nobody has to be told they are not good enough for one.
Nothing about choosing your own hours changes. The only difference is that each row now offers a list of the people qualified for it — pick your name from that row's list instead of typing it anywhere. If your name is not on a row, that shift needs a level you have not reached yet, and the rung that gets you there is on this page.
Cover rows stay closed until the Trade row beside them is taken. Craig and Kyle are in the building all day — but Craig is in the workshop and Kyle is not always on the floor, so this makes sure a Cover shift is never the only person able to serve a customer. The existing rules — be fair, only take what you can commit to, find your own cover if you cannot make it — all still stand.
Bench records a technician on every job, but the choices are craig / kyle / casual. Replace those with people and the whole framework becomes measurable — without it, the evidence rule on every rung above has nothing to read. This is the one change that makes the rest work.
The level-to-service table in the Technician section is a first pass. Craig owns which level each job really needs — the wheel, bearing and Star services especially. Note that Bench currently lets "casual" take SVC-BIKE-BUILD, a full out-of-box build, which needs brakes and gears and so should sit at T4. That map is marked draft in the code and was never signed off.
S5 and S6 now describe the full loop — worklist, B2B portal, Shopify PO left at Ordered, then transfer and accept on the invoice. It has not been run once from start to finish. Do one real order that way before staff are taught it.
Authority now starts at Sales 2. What is unset is how much — whether an S2 can go to 5% and an S5 to 15%, or whether judgement alone is the limit. Without a number, "you own the margin you give away" is a sentiment rather than a rule.
2026 blocks are confirmed and in the cadence above. Queensland has not published 2027 where I can reach it, and Catholic schools track the state blocks with local pupil-free days varying. Add 2027 when it is out — the beat only works if the dates are in a calendar.