As they combed a just-cleaned train car, Clark Hubanks and Dominic Cisneros could have been mistaken for detectives. With experienced eyes, they spotted a tiny tear in a seat cover and a wad of gum stuck to the bottom of a seat.
They shined flashlights into nooks and crannies, crouched under seats to check for trash, and, with cameras and clipboards in hand, documented everything wrong — and right — about the deep-cleaning of Car #1276. Hubanks and Cisneros are two of six Quality Assurance Officers whose job it is to audit processes within BART’s Rolling Stock & Shops (RS&S) department, basically, trains and their maintenance. Tonight they are auditing a process known as a “thorough clean,” which each train car gets every 90 days. On another day, they might audit machinery or documentation or even an outside vendor who is selling bumpers to BART.
