The Travis Perkins Group’s transport operation involves big numbers – 3,000 commercial vehicles and 4,000 drivers travelling 130 million miles a year – and ensuring safety and efficiency is a priority.

The company has set the bar high by joining Transport for London’s Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS) and it recently received gold accreditation from the scheme.

Under FORS, a voluntary certification scheme which sets the standard for fleets operating in London, companies are audited annually to ensure best practice in vehicle safety and efficiency. It has a three-tiered membership structure encompassing bronze, silver and gold accreditation, and rewards high-quality operators committed to becoming safer, greener and more efficient.

"The Travis Perkins Group was the seventh organisation to join the FORS scheme as a founding member, and we really wanted to demonstrate to our customers that we have a safe, efficient operation with professional, engaged drivers. We’ve been progressively working towards gold standard over the years, so we’re thrilled to have reached it," said Graham Bellman, group director of fleet and transport.

Criteria for FORS gold accreditation includes ensuring that all drivers’ licences are verified with the DVLA and that all heavy goods vehicles working in major urban conurbations have close-proximity safety equipment installed to warn drivers of cyclists. Travis Perkins was the first builders merchant in the scheme to implement the technology across its London-based fleet.

For Travis Perkins these improvements are the result of consultation with vehicle drivers, who are regarded as the key to better safety standards.

"Responsibility runs all the way through the supply chain as people work together to improve safety standards," said Robin Proctor, supply chain director. "Safety used to be a matter of people sitting behind desks creating rules about what drivers should and shouldn’t be doing, but that doesn’t work. The missing element was better engagement with the drivers themselves.

"For example, a driver in one of our timber centres came up with a solution that allowed workers to get a strap across the bed of a truck to secure the load without physically climbing onto the vehicle – something that has always been difficult due to the different configurations of timber. We’ve now patented this tool and are hoping to introduce it into the wider market. That’s the real power of engagement.

"Our success with FORS is really a culture issue: our key priority is ensuring that our deliveries are taking place safely for both our customers and colleagues, and to do this you have to have the right kind of culture in place so people are really engaged with the idea of operating safely. There’s a very strong correlation between people feeling valued in their job, in the knowledge that they’re being looked after by their management team, and how safely they operate in the real world."

This culture has led to several initiatives being developed across the group to improve safety and efficiency. The ‘keeping your feet on the ground’ policy, for example, directly tackles the risks of working at height. Cranes have been engineered to hook onto bags of aggregate and lift them onto vehicle beds without human input, cutting the risk of accidents. Similarly, vehicles across the fleet have been fitted with alarms that alert drivers if their handbrake hasn’t been set properly.

Efficiency is the second facet of FORS accreditation, and signals another companywide effort across a fleet that travels a staggering 130 million miles each year.

"As part of programmes to improve vehicle efficiency, fuel usage, distances travelled and incident numbers, we have a team of assessors who deliver bespoke training to our drivers each year to help them get the best out of their vehicle – this helps reduce road speed, boost efficiency and, in turn, reduce CO2 emissions," said Mr Bellman. In fact, the group reduced CO2 emissions by five tonnes to 35 tonnes per site from 2011-12.

Vehicle tracking
Sophisticated use of vehicle tracking across the fleet has enabled Travis Perkins to improve vehicle utilisation, increasing deliveries while reducing the number of vehicles on the road. Also, integration of vehicle tracking software with point of sale platforms enables trucks to take the most efficient routes, resulting in a saving of 10 miles per truck each day across a 2,000-strong fleet. This has also been the springboard to the Safer Roads campaign, which ranks drivers on their actual vehicle speed against the speed limit to give an accurate insight into efficiency.

Travis Perkins is also working to improve efficiency across the fleet contracted from DHL, which operates from the company’s Northampton distribution centre, handling 160,000 deliveries a year to 1,000 branches throughout the UK. A collaborative approach has already led to the introduction of pallet collars to vehicles that stack around the pallet, enabling better use of vehicle height and further improving efficiency.

Through initiatives such as backhauling, shared loads and procurement, DHL aims to save more than £900,000 over its three-and-ahalf- year contract.

With a stream of improvements still in the pipeline, one key challenge remains for the team: keeping hold of the gold accreditation.

"It’s not getting the accreditation that’s hardest," said Mr Bellman, "it’s keeping it!"