Business Champion – Costain

At project level Costain have developed a driver risk management process which includes a permit to drive system for casual drivers, on-line automated driving licence checking and risk assessments. Wellbeing medicals are offered for all new drivers, as well as, conducting random drug and alcohol testing and for cause testing after certain incidents.

Costain are currently fitting forward facing cameras in company cars, other cars used on company business and a selection of commercial vehicles. Telematics using black box technology is fitted to all HGV’s and some light commercials within the fleet and is fitted dependent upon project utilisation and requirements. Where fitted, this assists line management with a daily monitoring of vehicle movements, fuel use and effective management of driver behaviour as well as providing a high-level view of vehicle and driving standards to fleet management and the Costain TSG. Currently 23% of the combined HGV/LCV fleet have these fitted. This also supports the Costain Lone Worker Policy by helping to reduce the risks to employees working remotely.

To ensure all Costain contracts comply with the latest FORS and Construction Logistics and Community Safety (CLOCS) standards, in 2018 Costain revised their How to Manage and Control Transport Logistics procedure and associated tools. This procedure ensures that contracts implement the necessary measures to ensure the safety of vehicle movements, the protection of vulnerable road users and education of staff.

By using a combination of incident reporting data, driving data (where appropriate), MORR data, claims statistics and fines data, Costain internally develop and allocate company branded bespoke e-learning modules based on collision and infringement trends.

In addition to being analysed and translated into strategy some telematics data and details of certain driver risks are also passed to local line managers to enable accountability and ownership at the appropriate level. This provides them with the insights and skills to manage their assigned fleet of vehicles properly and understand the influence they have on the behaviour and general safety culture of their drivers.

Costain’s MORR scores are divided between behaviour and regime. The data shows that 12.5% of drivers fall into the critically high-risk rating for regime with 98.8% of risk assessments completed indicating a low behaviour risk level. Costain has developed behavioural based coaching programs and fatigue management plans that cover regime for both drivers and their managers to address those that fall into the high-risk category.

These periodic dashboards contain the following fleet safety KPI’s:

• Collision frequencies, types, severity and costs to the business
• High risk drivers based on telemetry and other data (speeding and other driver style)
• Fuel usage, including costs, CO2, idling, over capacity filling, out of hours driving on certain commercial vehicles.
• Compliance to on-line risk management portal
• Operator Compliance Risk Scores (OCRS – a risk-based mechanism used to calculate the likelihood of an operator being non-compliant and used By VOSA to determine which vehicles to select for roadside checks)
• Driving fines and offences
• Tyre transactions and wear (on certain vehicles, cars and HGV’s)

A key performance Indicator for this metric is the collision frequency rate. This is calculated as the percentage of drivers in the fleet that are involved in a collision in a month. The graphs below highlight the downward trend for both all accident frequency as well as own fault collision frequency across the same period in consecutive years.

The score is calculated based on the number of relative speeding, harsh braking, and acceleration events, as well as time spent idling and time and distance driven. The graph below shows an improving trend.

Many of these have vastly reduced transport associated risks not only to Costain’s employees and the business, but also to all other road users and clients.

These measures have resulted in a reduction in the overall insurance premium cost and an associated reduction in the monthly insurance premium charge to Costain projects by 9%, a reduction in the time employees spend driving and an increase in the use of public transport.

Costain have achieved a 17% reduction in accidents for the first quarter of 2018 in comparison to the same period of the previous year. There has been a 26% reduction in the number of miles’ employees (car drivers, those receiving a car allowance, casual allowance or car sharing) are driving on business in the first quarter of 2018 compared with the same period in 2017. This has been achieved partly through the use of Skype which has increased 70% since 2014 and the cycle to work scheme in which 227 employees have participated, helping to reduce the overall miles driven.

Over the past 12 months Costain has nearly doubled the number of drivers with up to date road risk assessments completed and assessed by line management, with additional training assigned where appropriate.  An 18% reduction in costs incurred by the business for own fault road traffic incidents against the same period twelve months prior has also been noted.

Policies

• Commercial Vehicle Drivers Handbook
• Health and Wellbeing Policy
• Fatigue Management Procedure
• Induction for drivers of large commercial vehicles
• Costain Road Risk Reduction Plan
• Permit to drive
• Driver Training Matrix
• Transport Logistics Management Plan
• Wellbeing Strategy