Iron Mountain cuts driving incidents 80% and achieves 14% fuel savings

Iron Mountain helps organisations around the world reduce the risks and costs associated with storing, protecting and managing company information.

Iron Mountain’s fleet of 450 vehicles in the UK and Ireland includes 290 vans while the rest are various types of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) including articulated and specialised vehicles.

At the end of 2008 the company formulated a business case for a comprehensive programme of assessment and training. Its key objectives were to:

• Reduce the risk of harm to employees and others
• Reduce the number of incidents
• Reduce costs
• Fulfill their legal duty under Health & Safety legislation
• Meet planned corporate social responsibility objectives

To kick of the initiative, Zurich Risk Engineering (ZRE) conducted an audit to measure Iron Mountain’s work-related road risk management and compare them with industry best practices. The ZRE audit covered elements including fleet safety policy, leadership and culture, driver training and wellbeing.

Following the audit, Iron Mountain embarked on a comprehensive risk assessment programme for all its commercial vehicle drivers. This included testing drivers about the Iron Mountain driver policies in their handbook; an online driver risk assessment programme covering all areas of road safety; driver assessment and training using a team of five in-house driver trainers.

All Iron Mountain commercial vehicle drivers are graded based on a number of factors, including their collision and violation histories, parking infringements, compliance with procedures and compliance with internal and customer Health & Safety procedures. Iron Mountain is currently reviewing the concept of different grades attracting different salaries, meaning there will be direct correlation between a driver’s safety performance and their pay packet. It is hoped that this will encourage a continuous improvement culture amongst the drivers.

This risk management strategy and programme has resulted in an on-going downward trend in the incident and claim rates. Iron Mountain has reduced the number of incidents reported by 71% in two years from 824 in the 2008 to 237 in the 2010. Alongside the reduction in incidents, Iron Mountain’s cost of claims has reduced by 43% in two years from nearly £800,000 in 2008 policy year to £460,000 in 2010.

Iron Mountain has received recognition for its innovative safety programme by achieving a ‘Highly Commended’ at Brake’s ‘Awards for Excellence’ 2010 competition, in the Company Driver Safety (Smaller fleets) category.

But the team at Iron Mountain has not rested on its laurels. It is now taking these initiatives further by deploying GreenRoad across its entire fleet in partnership with its insurance provider, Zurich.

Zurich is one of GreenRoad’s insurance partners. The two companies started collaborating in 2010 on Zurich’s global integrated fleet risk management solution, Zurich Fleet Intelligence (ZFI). Zurich aims to help its customers like Iron Mountain reduce their collision claims rate and insurance premiums by using GreenRoad’s intelligence to gain new understanding about risk and safety levels leading to more effective risk management strategies.

Results

A pilot project in 2010 involved 32 Iron Mountain drivers using GreenRoad’s service and delivered spectacular results. Iron Mountain saw MPG averages increase by 14%; an 80% reduction in risky manoeuvres; and an 80% reduction in incidents compared to the previous year.

While using GreenRoad’s service over a ten-month period in 2010 the company submitted just three minor insurance claims. Iron Mountain drivers performed so well that GreenRoad created a new ultra-low risk category of blue drivers as a subset of its green drivers.

Iron Mountain first signed up for a trial of GreenRoad’s service through Transport for London (TfL)'s Freight Operators Recognition Scheme (FORS). Iron Mountain was one of the first companies to receive affiliation from FORS who are an industry-led membership programme that offers practical advice and guidance to freight operators to help them drive down costs, become safer and more environmentally-focused. To encourage safer driving, TfL offers GreenRoad’s service to all members for free for the first three months.

“The results of this initiative speak for themselves. Our senior driver trainer, Ray Jervis, set an incredibly tough target safety score of 10 for the pilot but our drivers have risen to the challenge and are consistently below ten,” said Rory Morgan, Iron Mountain National logistics general manager. “As well as improving safety GreenRoad also helps with our mandate to reduce fuel consumption. We complement GreenRoad’s service with intensive driver training, fuel-saving technology and fleet management software all of which has resulted in a phenomenal 14% fuel savings. This was recognised by GreenFleet magazine which gave us their Large Private Sector Fleet of the Year award 2010.”

During 2011 Iron Mountain have received further recognition by winning the Brake Road Safety ‘Company driver safety award’ and the Fleet News ‘Fleet of the Year 250-500 vehicles’, along with short-listing and highly commended with Motor Transport ‘Van Fleet Operator’ and Brake’s ‘Eco fleet’ award.

Although Iron Mountain has already achieved 14% fuel savings during the trial on 32 vehicles, and is currently reporting a 9% MPG improvement across the fleet, the company plans to increase this number by using GreenRoad’s idling solution. Customers typically see 2 – 5% drop in fuel consumption with the idling feature.

Customers typically see 2 – 5% drop in fuel consumption with the idling feature. The idling management capability quickly identifies specific drivers, vehicles, or trips that negatively impact fuel performance. It identifies idling activities that are exceptions to company policy, based on client-defined policy thresholds, applying sophisticated filtering to the unavoidable idling that occurs at traffic lights and junctions.

GreenRoad’s service went live in late February 2011 in 450 Iron Mountain HGVs and LCVs across 30 depots in the UK and Ireland and is now used by 500 plus drivers. Results to date show a reduction of vehicle incidents by 13% on the same period in 2010 and own damage costs down by a third. Iron Mountain was the first UK fleet to use GreenRoad’s new optional ‘speed by speed zone’ feature across its entire fleet to highlight any speed violations by drivers.

“We believe that one of the key success factors in any work- related road risk management strategy is to develop the on-road safety culture. Driving is a very emotive issue and drivers need to recognise that there may be opportunities to improve their own driving. We have developed a communications strategy to ensure that we help drivers understand the importance of driver behaviour,” said Morgan.

He continued, “The success of our risk management programme is also thanks to the close collaboration between all the key stakeholders and GreenRoad. In addition to the operations team that implements the assessment and training strategies, there are the transport managers, who are actively supporting initiatives at a local level, the risk management team, which is closely measuring performance and ensuring that senior managers are aware of all the initiatives, as well as third parties including Transport for London and Zurich.”
Driving fleet safety with Iron Mountain
“Managing work-related road risks is not a short-term fix, and has to be reassessed on an on-going basis to ensure that any reductions in claims and collisions are sustainable, and so that further improvements can be made,” said Andy Price, Practice Leader - Motor Fleet, Zurich Risk Engineering. “With Iron Mountain’s investment in in-house driver trainers, and a wide range of risk reduction strategies in place or being planned, the business remains focused on the issue to ensure that the impressive reductions in incidents and claims continues.”

Reflecting its success, Iron Mountain has been invited to be part of both the industry’s Van Excellence Governance committee and the FTA (Freight Transport Association) Corporate Social Responsibility Focus Group. Iron Mountain is also working with the Road Safety ISO industry guide to seek accreditation when the ISO is released in 2012.

And, possibly unheard of in the industry, the partnership with Zurich resulted in a 14% rate reduction on Iron Mountain’s UK insurance premium for 2011.