Preventing Road Accidents & Injuries for the Safety of Employees
Introduction: Why KTL manage Work Related Driving
The reason KTL manages work related driving is simply a moral one - “KTL believe that all accidents are preventable, including Road Traffic Accidents”. We want to prevent injury and fatalities. KTL recognises our duty of care to all employees, sub-contractors and other road users.
KTL has 105 vehicles (not including private cars used for work related driving) and has a 15 HGV’s. In 2010, we travelled 3.5 million km’s.
Risk Assessment
KTL have recognised that Driving for Work is a major risk within the company, in order to prevent accidents we need to be pro-active in this area rather than sit back and wait for a serious accident to happen
Controls
With the aid of the HSA, KTL identified that in-order to control all its driving risks, the risk itself needed to be broken down into 3 categories: The People, The Vehicle and the Journey. When we looked at each of these categories we found we were able to implement some realistic, practical and economical controls in order to reduce the risk altogether. Firstly we looked at the employee’s and staff members who will be or have been driving on KTL’s behalf for work.
KTL Controls
1. Induction
2. Driving Policy / Drivers Handbook
3. Independent Driving Assessments
4. Driver Training
As part of our company induction, the employee will be informed of the KTL driving policy and procedures. They will be informed of personal accountability when driving to and from work.
They will meet with the KTL fleet manager and during this meeting KTL will check what type of license they have, do they have any penalty points or convictions and how many years driving experience do they have.
Leading on from the induction the employee will undergo an independent driving assessment with a private driving school (recognised by the RSA). If the competency of driving is not at a required level the instructor will provide the driver with recommendations to help them improve their driving skills. Depending on the recommendations of the instructor this could lead to further assessments or even additional driving lessons.
The Second Category is the vehicle:
KTL Controls
1. Dedicated Plant Manager
2. Regular Vehicle Inspections
3. Maintenance Schedules
4. Minimising Distractions
KTL have a designated Plant and Fleet Manager (Donal Gray) who regularly inspects and monitors driving behaviours. He is heavily involved in the purchasing of new fleet ensuring that they are economically and environmental fit for purpose and that they are the correct type and size for the driver/tasks they will be carrying out. The Fleet Manager / Safety Department and the Drivers themselves carry out a series of inspections and audits on the company and private vehicles to ensure operation and condition is at an optimum level which leads to the development of a maintenance plan that is then passed onto our in house mechanic.
As part of KTL’s driving policies a No Smoking in company vehicles is enforced along side a no operating mobile phone or GPS devices while driving instead we encourage employees to switch phones to voicemail or silent until their Journey is completed.
Finally the Journey:
KTL Controls
1. Weekly Programme Meeting
2. Restricted number of miles/hours driving per day
3. Curfew / Limited Weekend Driving
4. 2nd / 3rd Driver to combat Fatigue
5. Conference Calling / Teleconferencing (Skype)
6. Pool Car
Every week all the site project managers meet with a designated Programme Manager to plan the programme of works for the week ahead this enables us to identify the distances between sites, expected mileage, total journey times and access issues. With our regionalised crews, we can plan and programme them safely and efficiently. It is KTL’s policy that if the journey to / from work is more that 90 minutes, the driver stays over-night in a local B&B to ensure that he / she is well rested. KTL have independently assessed the majority of its’ employee’s which usually allows 2 or 3 drivers per crew to share the driving.
Conference Calling / Teleconferencing (Skype) is set up to reduce the need to travel to meetings. KTL also operate a pool car which is used to ensure a minimum number of vehicles are travelling to meetings etc
Monitoring & Review
In order to monitor and review the afore mentioned controls KTL have invested in a “Celtrak” GPS Fleet Management Software tool which monitors speed, hours and miles travelled, idle time and diesel consumption. See attached link to “Celtrak “website.
http://www.celtrak.com/
This GPS system produces real time postioning of our fleet on google maps, whether the vehicle is moving or stationary. This is useful in the event of a security breech as it alerts the fleet manager of movements after hours or at weekends. The system generates real time / daily / weekly information regarding distances travelled, hours travelling in total, speed infringements. It also informs / keeps record of service history next service due as mentioned previously. This information is fed back into our management system, discussed at the programme meetings and communicated to the drivers.
Summary
KTL hold Safety Seminars (Bi-Annually) with all of its employees and subcontractors. The seminars are opened by the CEO and Managing Director of KTL in which they reaffirm their commitment to safety and they ask for the same commitment in return from those that work on behalf of the company. Over the years KTL have had many guest speakers from the RSA / Traffic Corp. participating in presentations and discussions to highlight first hand experiences of the consequences of an RTA.
Each month KTL prepares a monthly Safety, Health, Environmental and Quality newsletter for all staff / contractors and clients. There is a section on driving in almost every monthly newsletter that KTL communicates to its staff / contractors. In addition to this MMS safety alerts are sent to all employees and subcontractors to give them advanced warnings if there is any expected delays on main routes /motor ways, if there has been an accident or if the weather is bad
The benefits of having dedicated and committed personnel to manage road safety / driving within the company have allowed us to achieve the following.
• A low number of RTA’s / 100,000km
• Insurance discounts
• Greater understanding within organisation of road safety and driving efficiency
• Reductions in communication costs
• Increased efficiency and utilisation of resources
• Less downtime of fleet
• Speed Reduction across all fleet
• Reduced fuel and maintenance costs
• Better Theft and Security Protection
KTL recognises that it faces many new and existing challenges in driving and driving behaviours as the company continues to expand. We know we are making good progress in this area but still have a number of new objectives to implement to ensure we keep protecting our employee’s and subcontractors
A number of initiatives KTL are currently operating at the moment include:
• Entry into the SME’s category of the ETSC PRAISE awards 2011
• GPS units with additional Drive Rite – Behavioural Based Module (Driver Visual Display Unit on Board)
• Diesel consumption in relation to miles driven
For more information, contact:
Donal Gray - donal.gray@ktl.ie
Claire O'Brien - claire.obrien@ktl.ie