Women in Transport – Alison Moriarty

20th June 2022

Alison Moriarty

• Group H&S manager for Enterprise
• Green Fleet & Road Risk Manager for Morrisons Utilities
• Fleet risk and compliance manager for Skanska
• Became a Chartered Fellow of the Institute of Logistics and Transport in 2020
• Sits as a magistrate on the bench at Swansea

If your organisation is just getting to grips with the issue of work-related road risk, Alison Moriarty is one of the best-placed people to talk to.

Whilst employed by the Inland Revenue, she developed an interest in Health and Safety and became a union safety rep. This developed into a decision to begin studying for NEBOSH (The National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health) qualifications when her daughter was just a few weeks old and she had returned to work.

She’s worked in safety and risk for over 25 years and has specialised in fleet risk and compliance since 2008 after noticing a huge disconnect between the risks associated with roads compared to on-site risks.

At Skanska, she passed her International Transport Manager CPC and started learning about the fleet industry with all its vagaries and complexities.

During her career, she has worked extensively with businesses in construction, civil engineering, utilities and passenger transport, which have traditionally been seen as ‘male dominated’ professions.

She has been hugely successful in reducing the fleet risk and collision rates of several large fleets by focusing on driver behaviour and education and has received many industry awards for her success in this area, including the Kevin Storey Award for Outstanding Commitment to Road Safety, which was awarded to her at the Brake 2019 Fleet Safety Awards.

Having worked operationally for most of her career, Alison is now Fleet Risk Director for DRiiVE Consulting Ltd. In this role, she works with l different fleets to help them reduce the risk associated with moving vehicles and, therefore, making the roads and communities they work in, safer.

She sits on several high-profile boards and committees that focus on raising road safety standards and identifying and sharing best practise – subjects dear to Driving for Better Business.

Some words of wisdom from Alison Moriarty

Why leadership matters for a safe driving culture:

• Whilst drivers who don’t exhibit the correct behaviours can present a big risk, in safety, reputation and financial terms, but good drivers can be very effective brand ambassadors. It is imperative that you have a strong safety culture and that this is promoted throughout the whole company.
• The lowest standards that you display are the highest standards you can expect from people you manage. The same applies to contractors – you can’t expect a high standard if you don’t exhibit that yourself.

Driving is a work activity and should be assessed accordingly

• The vehicle is a workplace: driving for work is the highest risk of occupational mortality (after deep sea fishing and mining). Poor driving leads to injury and death, financial challenges and reputational damage: you don’t want your company in the news for all the wrong reasons.

On driving for work

• Many companies have excellent induction programmes but don’t cover the standards expected when driving from an initial induction through to ongoing improvement.
• If I could achieve just one thing it would be to get the HSE to make work-related road incidents reportable because reportable means responsible.
• I worked in the public transport industry for a while, and I’ve seen drivers dismissed for poor driving and then re-hired the next week because of a shortage. If we’re serious about improving driving standards, we need to have integrity in the recruitment approach.
• I’ve noticed a reluctance from some managers to have their driving behaviours monitored. A safe culture needs leadership from the top.

On women in the transport sector

• I don’t think that my gender has held me back, but I do think that I had to maybe prove myself a bit more to get the same respect as male colleagues, in the early days. I hope that seeing other women achieving accolades will help encourage more women in the industry.

Listen to Alison Moriarty on leadership for a safe driving culture when she addressed an audience of health and safety professionals recently in the Driver Safety Theatre sessions run by Driving for Better Business at the Health and Safety Event.