Doug Jenkins

Occupational road risk management has been the number-one fleet industry issue for the last few years, but with a seemingly endless list of suppliers promising to deliver “safety first”, how do companies know they are forming business partnerships with the crème de la crème of the industry?

In an unregulated market sector, almost anyone can set themselves up as a provider of risk management and driver-training services and call on freelance trainers to deliver at-work driving safety programmes. But, with the ever-increasing focus of the government, the police and the Health and Safety Executive on at-work driving, some of the UK’s leading risk management companies decided a united front was required to achieve the common goal of getting occupational driver safety on the agenda in every boardroom in the country.

Hence the Fleet Safety Association was born and its first chairman, Doug Jenkins, managing director of Driving Services, says: “We are determined to effectively communicate the need for employers to introduce measures which reduce the risk of people who drive in the course of their work and then provide assurances that customers using member organisations will receive dependable, effective, value-for-money products and services.” So the FSA, which was formally launched earlier this year, has two goals: to promote the importance of risk management to corporate decision-makers from a financial, legal and moral standpoint, and to ensure that member organisations meet its Code of Professional Conduct and thereby deliver best practice to the market.

Additionally, the FSA wants to establish itself as the “voice of the risk management industry” with government and its agencies, such as the Driving Standards Agency and the Health and Safety Executive, just as the Association of Car Fleet Operators and the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association hold that position on behalf of fleet managers and leasing and rental companies. The Code of Professional Conduct will act as a seal of approval or kitemark for companies scouring the marketplace for a risk management provider they can work with to implement an at-work driving safety programme.

Mr Jenkins says: “Our newly-compiled Code of Professional Practice should certainly be viewed as a ‘kitemark’. Companies looking to work with a risk management provider that is not a member of the FSA or currently using one should ask themselves why? If there are no compelling reasons, companies should always use a member of the FSA.” Apart from Driving Services, current FSA members are IAM Fleet (including Drive & Survive), Pro-Drive, Fleet Support Group, BSM and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents with a number of other companies expected to join shortly.

Fact file: Name: Doug Jenkins Job: Managing director of Driving Services and chairman of the Fleet Safety Association. Career: Police officer with Cheshire Constabulary 1979-1988 – member of traffic unit 1981-88, police class one motorcyclist and car driver, qualified police advanced car instructor, CPC holder in national road haulage, Driving Standards Agency ADI grade 6, RoSPA and IAM examiner. Launched Driving Services in 1988. Driving Services customers include: AstraZeneca, BOC Group, Cadbury Schweppes, Chevron HM Revenue and Customs, T-Mobile, Travis Perkins. The company is also the largest provider of national driver improvement and speed awareness courses in the UK.

Hopes are high that many other risk management providers will join the FSA, subject to them meeting the requirements of the Code of Professional Conduct, thus giving prospective customers the reassurance that members will adhere to agreed quality standards and supply accurate and consistent guidance in terms of service delivery.

“I am sure there are going to be genuine reasons for not joining,” says Mr Jenkins. “Although if a risk management company is 100% behind the industry and associated standards, I can’t actually think of one.” Moves to launch a driver training association were first made around a decade ago, but the organisation broke down. A second attempt was made about three years ago, so why does Mr Jenkins have so much confidence that the FSA will succeed where other attempts have failed?

“I feel that personalities within the industry have changed, some have gone and many have matured,” he explains. “Also, at the time, some companies found it difficult to deal with the then Code of Conduct.” However, perhaps the most important point is that a decade ago driver training was a market sector in its infancy and searching for a clear identity and a legitimate place within the fleet industry. What emerged as “driver-training” has grown over the years into “fleet risk management” of which driver-training is just one single aspect. In addition, the legislative spotlight has been firmly fixed on at-work driving for sometime.

Mr Jenkins says: “Now that we can see more stability in the industry and what needs to be done, each company is more at ease with the total objectives of such a body, not with self-promotion.”

Those objectives are:

• To promote the benefits of managing work-related road safety to the widest possible audience, including commerce, industry, legislators and government departments.
  
  
• To promote the highest standards of management practice of vehicle fleet risk management and driver-training.
  
  
• To provide a research and statistical centre, to aggregate and publish statistics, and to provide analysis on corporate driver-training and vehicle fleet risk management and other relevant market information.
  
  
• To provide a technical centre providing commentary, guidance and advice on all legal and other regulatory developments of relevance to vehicle fleet safety management.
  
  
• To endorse members’ professional standing.
  
  
• To provide a forum for the exchange of non-competitive information and best practice among members.

RoadSafe director Adrian Walsh is providing a secretarial service to the FSA and Mr Jenkins says: “We now have much more resource behind the Association to enable us to overtly promote and respond as an industry to issues and debates.

“With having members of such standing, we have the ears of various high-level people in a number of government departments and agencies. Now that we can speak with one voice, these departments and agencies are willing to talk back and listen.” However, he adds: “Each member will always have the right to comment on their view, but as an industry I feel that points are made much more strongly when all members are behind the view. Government and agencies will not talk to individual companies but they will talk to the FSA as a representative industry voice.”

The FSA has two levels of membership:

• Full membership is available to companies which offer vehicle fleet risk management and fleet driver training services and which subscribe to the Code of Professional Practice.
  
  
• Associate membership is open to insurance companies, fleet decision-makers and other companies interested in promoting at-work safety. It is also available to any organisation that does not offer driver training or which cannot subscribe to the Code of Professional Practice, but which is otherwise interested in the fleet vehicle safety risk management business.

Further details of the FSA are available at: Website: www.fleetsafetyassociation.co.uk

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