Philip Goodwin Ltd – Going for Gold

Philip Goodwin Ltd has been running road sweepers for 33 years, today there is no job too big or too small. Our work takes place through Local Authorities, MOD Sites, Race Tracks, Building Sites, Landfill Sites, Road Construction, Quarries, Factory Sites and unique one-off projects across the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire areas. Philip Goodwin Ltd operates 8 modern sweeper and jetters from our base on the outskirts of Bedfordshire. We run reliable, regularly maintained vehicles which comply with the latest Health and Safety requirements. All vehicles are fitted with 4 way cameras, a minimum of 4 beacons, audible reversing alarms and class 6 mirrors. Philip Goodwin – Managing Director says FORS has definitely brought them forward in the industry and he fully promotes FORS to every company he comes across.

We came across FORS when tendering for work across London. When we looked at the requirements and benefits of joining the scheme we saw that they fitted in perfectly with our ethos of improving safety whilst complementing our drive to improve fuel efficiency and reduce our environmental impact.

We take compliance and safety very seriously so we achieved our Bronze and Silver Accreditation for the first time. FORS did help us by providing training and tools that improved the policies and procedures like the FORS Performance Management Toolkit and E-Learning modules.

The performance management toolkit really helped us set our targets for reducing our carbon footprint and improving our MPG. FORS has helped us improve our filing systems and procedures. Having completed a FORS Bronze audit we have put everything in place and we all know what we need to do when.

‘FORS has helped us achieve compliance and safety.’ – Philip Goodwin Managing Director

All our drivers have completed their Safe Urban Driving course. We have also invested heavily in vehicle safety systems cameras, offside proximity sensors and audible alarms for all our vehicles. All our drivers have also completed several FORS E-Learning modules.

‘We haven’t had any Accidents or Parking Fines and Charges in the past 3 years.’ – Philip Goodwin – Managing Director

We have managed to keep our Parking fines and accidents/incidents down to zero for the last 3 years. We have also increased our MPG by 8.36% compared to our baseline year. We achieved this by making sure we always selected the best route possible to all our sites and we plan ahead before leaving the yard.

*No incidents or PCN’s for the past 3 years.

• We get all my drivers to complete a comprehensive Medical Declaration on a annually basis even though the FORS Standard states once every 5 years. It’s also mentioned in the drivers handbook that if they at any point in time start suffering from a medical condition they need to notify the company ASAP as well as if they need to start taking medication prescribed by their GP or over the counter drugs. We will then investigate it to see if it’s still safe for the driver to be driving for the company and we may even ask the driver to get a letter from his doctor informing the company if he is still able to drive for the company. We will then start doing more driver assessments on the driver to make sure he isn’t a risk to the company or anyone on the road.
• We have put 2 young drivers through their HGV Drivers Licence in the past 3 years and we have also recently adopted a recruitment policy to try and help us recruit young drivers into the Transport industry.
• We only have 1 Operators yard and it’s just off Black Cat Round about on the A1M. We don’t carry out any work at our site, we only use this site for parking our Vehicles. Servicing is done by main dealers at their premises and as we are a Road Sweeping company we go to a site, sweep the road and site roads there and then come straight back to our yard. We don’t do any loading/unloading etc. which means there is also no added noise. All my lorries have white noise reversing alarms fitted to them.
• We can’t use trains or barges as our whole job is to sweep the roads outside of construction sites. Our clients sites are in South East of England, mainly London as well as the Hertfordshire area too. Our current average MPG across the whole fleet for the past 12 months is 11.79 MPG which is a 8.36% improvement compared to our baseline year which was 10.88 MPG. So even though we don’t have any electric vehicles we are reducing our Co2, Nox and PM’s by actively managing our anti idling and route planning. So using a Lorry is the most cost effective way us to do our work. We are replacing all our lorries with Euro 6 engines as and when they are due. We have looked at electric vehicles and because of the weights we carry and the fact that our lorries have specialist equipment fitted no manufacture have produced an alternative fuelled vehicle that can carry the weight we do and go over the same terrain we do.

We will continue using what FORS has taught us to improve our MPG and reduce any wasted idling we might have and keep our Parking fines and Charges to zero’

Gaining FORS Gold Accreditation shows how dedicated we are as a company to improving road safety and the safety of all vulnerable road users in London as well as nationally. We will continuously use what FORS has taught us to help reduce our carbon footprint and make the roads so safer for everyone that uses them.