FLEET CASE STUDY |
 Lord Jordan of Bournville, deputy president of RoSPA (left), presents the RoSPA Scotland Trophy to Joe Cleary, fleet business manager, ScottishPower Fleet Business |
ScottishPower Fleet Business has won Scotland’s top occupational health and safety award after going four years without a lost-time accident within the business. The Glasgow-based company, which is responsible for supplying and maintaining a diverse fleet of about 3,500 vehicles for ScottishPower and companies formerly within the ScottishPower Group, was presented with the award by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.
While that honour was for the company’s safety record where a total of 64 staff are employed involving 13 workshops in Scotland, the north west of England and North Wales, the organisation’s occupational road risk safety record has also been recognised by RoSPA with commendations in 2005 and 2006 and a highly commended in 2003. The company has also won six consecutive RoSPA gold medals for its health and safety performance.
ScottishPower is an international energy company, made up of four businesses: Energy Retail, Energy Wholesale and Energy Networks in the UK and PPM Energy in the United States. Through these businesses it provides electricity, transmission and distribution services in the UK, supplying in excess of 5.2 million electricity and gas services to homes and businesses across the UK; and operates electricity generation and gas storage facilities in the UK, United States and western Canada. With health and safety at the heart of ScottishPower, the company’s comprehensive managing occupational road risk policy was compiled in 2001 with the catalyst being the growing government, Health and Safety Executive and police focus on corporate manslaughter and the number of road crashes involving at-work drivers.
“Publicity at that time really focused the minds of management on our road risk and it was recognised that we needed to put in place the appropriate policies and procedures to control the risks,” explains John Parker, operations manager of ScottishPower Fleet Business. The organisation’s “live” managing occupational road risk document covering all aspects of vehicle operations was compiled and distributed to management at a local level. Today a Managing Occupational Road Risk Implementation Group, which is chaired by health and safety director George Kirk, ensures the spotlight remains on continuing to improve the company’s road safety record.
ScottishPower Fleet Business manages the risks of operating the fleet, which comprises company cars, vans, 4x4 vehicles, heavy trucks and specialist vehicles, including excavators, platforms and cranes. However, the day-to-day operation of those vehicles is the responsibility of individual business units and Mr Parker says: “We have developed an audit to monitor how each business unit applies the managing occupational road risk policy. Any irregularities are fed back to the individual business managers together with an action plan to bring them back into line.”
| “We have developed an audit to monitor how each business unit applies the managing occupational road risk policy” |
Road safety-related initiatives introduced by ScottishPower are many and varied and include: driver licence checks, driver medicals, checks on driver hours, vehicle checks, policies on mobile phone use, risk assessments by vehicle type, defensive driving, incident investigation, vehicle towing and reversing training and vehicle weight checks. Mr Parker says: “The policy is comprehensive and covers all aspects of road risk. It is now established, but that took a long time as it covers issues that impact on everyone and everyone has a view.
“ScottishPower’s road safety performance will only improve by continuing to champion the management of road risk, supporting the businesses within the company and enforcing audit compliance, all of which is our job.” Today, the focus is very much on a programme of continuous training for employees. Mr Parker says: “We provide a meaningful training programme that is tailored to individual employees and reflects their driver history. It is through this programme that we believe we will see further improvements in our road safety record.”
Roger Bibbings, RoSPA’s occupational safety adviser, says: “ScottishPower Fleet Business is a fine example to businesses throughout Scotland and the whole of the UK. We want to see other companies following their lead.”
