Health and Safety – part two – Safe driving

As an employer with 34 vans in our fleet, we are responsible for managing the health and safety risks to our teams who drive these vehicles in their day-to-day work. Health and safety law applies to work activities on the road in the same way as it does on a fixed site.

Since 2018, Swiftclean has had the driver management system – Lightfoot – installed in our company vehicles.

This has led to a huge improvement in the driving of our field-based teams, and consequently, has led to a reduction in fuel bills, on-road accidents and vehicle damage.

Our miles per gallon figure has increased by 6.1%, leading to cost savings on fuel of approximately 10%.

Fewer accidents and a reduction in driving penalties have led to a reduction in our insurance premiums by 20%.

As part of our ISO14001 accreditation, (the internationally recognized standard for environmental management systems – EMS), we are always looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint. When deciding to install Lightfoot across our fleet, we were strongly influenced by the possible reductions in not only our carbon footprint, but also in NOx particulates and CO2 emissions. We have since achieved a CO2 reduction of 23 tonnes each year.

Lightfoot has an ‘Elite driver’ standard – this is when the driver consistently achieves scores above 85%. These drivers can unlock prizes such as track days and monetary rewards which is a great incentive and several of our drivers have benefited by winning experience days and cash prizes.

Swiftclean has a driving inter-league which our site teams across the UK are involved in, and these figures are reported on at monthly team leader meetings, promoting healthy competition between the drivers.

The system also helps us to monitor instances of bad driving. Drivers are then given support to improve their standards with hints and tips from their line managers. Improvements have often led to them reaching the Elite standard with the opportunity to win prizes.