‘Responsible procurement’ is key to driving up at-work driver safety

By Gareth Roberts

5 November 2012

Occupational road risk management standards are being driven up by a new focus on ‘responsible procurement’.

That’s the view of Ian Brooks, an occupational road risk advisor to ARI Fleet UK and a former Metropolitan Police chief inspector who now runs his own Oscar Strategic Consulting Business.

The holistic approach to driver, vehicle and journey management through ‘responsible procurement’ has come to prominence with Crossrail, the wholly owned subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL), which is responsible for the building of the new 73-mile rail route from Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west, through new twin-bore 13 mile tunnels below central London to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. The route is due to open in 2018.

While Crossrail is the catalyst for the new approach to managing at-work road safety, it has already been adopted by Transport for London, which, according to Mr Brooks, is currently reviewing 6,000 contracts to see if there is a need to encourage suppliers to introduce further compliance with the Health and Safety Executive’s ‘Driving at Work: Managing Work-Related Road Safety’ guidance, which is also known as INDG382.

Simultaneously, London Mayor Boris Johnson is now reviewing responses to a consultation document, ‘Towards A Road Safety Action Plan for London: 2012’. The draft plan outlines 70 key actions - some impacting on work-related road safety - and sets a new target of cutting the number of those killed or seriously injured by a further 40% by 2020.

During a lengthy police career Brooks’ responsibilities included road death investigations and road policing enforcing and development of the Commercial Vehicle Education Unit as part of what is now known as the Fleet Operators’ Recognition Scheme (FORS). The specialist team of traffic officers undertook proactive and reactive company visits making use of delegated health and safety enforcement powers.

Brooks said at a meeting of the RiskMaster User Group – RiskMaster is ARI Fleet UK’s online at-work safe driving solution: “Crossrail decided on the basis of its undertaking not to just address the work site as part of its health and safety responsibility but that equipment, materials and other items needed to be delivered to and from sites.

“Therefore as part of its undertaking Crossrail decided to treat its sub-contractors journeys to and from sites as its responsibility and that has resulted to date in the training of 3,500 drivers with a further 3,000 drivers due to be trained.”

Brooks said: “It was not just about sub-contractors operating vehicles that were legally compliant it was also about Crossrail ensuring that it worked with sub-contractors that employed compliant drivers and those organisations had management arrangements in place that could demonstrate competence through driving at work.”

He added: “The majority of the journeys to Crossrail sites are in large vans and trucks and the catalyst for the approach was safety concerns that were raised in relation to cyclists being injured and killed by left-turning vehicles.”