Pickfords moves up in safety league

Pickfords has introduced a raft of occupational road risk management initiatives to its business that has seen the company remove hundreds of accidents from its business operation and slash its bill for third party payouts and vehicle repair costs by an average of £300,000 a year.

The removal firm's focus on managing at-work driver safety across its near 900- strong fleet, which includes 350 20-tonne trucks, 250 company cars and almost 300 other vehicles including trailers, has seen the business win a number of top awards including, most recently, the 'Fleet Award' in the Prince Michael International Road Safety Awards 2006.

Pickfords' deputy group insurance manager Nick Purkis was also made UK fleet risk manager in early 2005 and he was charged with cutting the number of crashes - mainly low speed parking and reversing. From 620 incidents in 2001, the number of crashes across the fleet, which clocks up around 18 million kilometres a year, dropped to 360 in 2005 and fell to just 200 in 2006. Mr Purkis initially established a Safe Driving Committee and persuaded Pickfords' chief executive Kevin Pickford to become the director responsible for fleet safety.

Instrumental

Mr Pickford said: "Nick has been instrumental in placing road safety high up on the agenda of all staff within the company, at grass-roots level right through to the board of directors.

He has headed up vital initiatives and is committed to spreading the road safety message in the wider community. We are proud of our achievements."

The committee of seven directors and managers, working in fields ranging from health and safety to employee communications, meets quarterly to discuss fleet safety issues and draws up proposals, which are then put to the board and the European Group Health and Safety Committee. Measures and information is then cascaded down through Pickfords' branch network.

Initiatives introduced include:

• Compulsory licence checking - all staff who hold a driving licence, regardless of whether or not they drive on business, are required to complete a mandate and have their licence checked.
• All staff who drive their own vehicles on company business, regardless of whether they receive a cash allowance, are required to submit: copies of the vehicle registration document to prove the age of the vehicle, copy of the latest MoT Certifi cate and copy insurance certifi cate, confirming business class use. Any member of staff failing to submit their documents, is not permitted to drive their vehicles on company business and if they receive a cash allowance, then they will lose it.
• Online risk assessments for all company car drivers
• Based on the results of the profiling, driver training is provided for company car drivers judged to require it - so far more than 100 people have completed a course - and a range of educational events and resources are provided for all staff.
• For professional commercial vehicle drivers, a similar scheme has been established with Leyland Daf, which has trained 20 drivers, who in turn now go out on the road with all new HGV drivers to assess their driving skills.
• Random compulsory drug and alcohol testing
• All crashes being reported and recorded and the data analysed on a monthly basis with areas for improvement identifi ed and initiatives developed accordingly.
• All tachographs subjected to independent analysis.

Data analysis resulted in initially infra-red reversing sensors being fitted to all trucks and banksman training improved, which has resulted in the number of reversing incidents substantially falling. A recent trial of CCTV has further helped reduce the number of reversing incidents and the technology is now being fitted to all commercial vehicles, which are also equipped with speed limiters.

Problem

Meanwhile, a problem with high-sided vehicles being blown over in strong winds resulted in the design of trucks being studied and suspension settings adjusted with the result that the problem has been eradicated.

Additionally, all of Pickfords branches receive monthly statistics showing how many accidents they have had and what the main causes are. They are provided in the form of a graph to make them easily understandable by all and are placed on staff notice boards. Further breakdowns are also provided to the branch manager, showing the most frequent day of week and time of day in order that they can spot any developing trends and alter journey schedules accordingly.

This year Mr Purkis plans to launch Driver of the Year Awards for both company car and commercial vehicle drivers.

He said: "Our whole safety focus is designed to keep our employees safe and ensure they return to their families at the end of the day."

He added: "Our results speak for themselves. Originally the target was to reduce our accident rate by 40% by 2010, which was in line with Government policy. But we have been so successful that I would like to see the downward trend continue to the extent where we have fewer than 100 incidents a year in two years time."

Other awards won by the company include a RoSPA Bronze Award for Managing Occupational Road Risk last year and Mr Purkis being named 'Fleet Risk Manager of the Year' in the annual awards from industry weekly publication Fleet News.

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