Mulalley & Co Ltd – Sustaining Gold

Mulalley, a leading contractor for construction, development, refurbishment and maintenance is at the forefront of innovation. Having formined in 1972 we have grown immensely into one of the most experienced and trusted companies in the industry. ‘We seek to be a key service provider to our clients and partners and are committed to helping them deliver the highest quality services at best value’, says Richard Hatcher – Purchasing Director/IT Director. We are based in Redbridge and operate over London and the South East. Becoming FORS accredited and maintaining Gold has helped us achieve a 30% reduction in our PCNs and a 46.9% reduction in carbon footprint since our base year.

We began looking at FORS in 2013 as we realised the requirements and benefits of the scheme fitted in perfectly with our ethos of improving safety and our initiatives to improve fuel efficiency and reduce our environmental impact. FORS clearly aligns aligned with our achievements as a Considerate Constructors Scheme Founder Member and an Investor in People Gold and RoSPA Gold accredited company. FORS also helped us tender for work. Therefore, we have been FORS accredited since 2013.

We take compliance and safety very seriously so we achieved our Silver and Gold accreditation first time. The FORS framework has assisted us with improving our filing systems and procedures and more recently, our commitment to best practice.

The FORS toolkits and free training courses have proved invaluable in enabling us to progress from Silver to Gold and then maintaining Gold. We have also used the FORS templates for noise monitoring and modal shift, which led us to devise our own vehicle procurement assessment to help guide the purchase of new vehicles, to ensure we consider the quietest, cleanest and most efficient specifications.

‘FORS has given us a structured approach to improve our fleet’s safety and environmental performance to ensure we sustain our Gold accreditation.’ – Eamon O’Malley, Director

FORS catalysed our action on road safety. All our commercial drivers have completed safe urban driving or van smart courses and several of the available.

FORS e-learning courses. We also subsequently became a CLOCS (construction logistics and community safety) Champion to demonstrate our commitment to managing work related road risk relating to our construction sites, given the disproportionate risk that construction vehicles pose to vulnerable road users. This has helped us maintain our low level of collisions and incidents again (Reduced by 60% from our base year).

We are committed to improving our environmental performance, demonstrated by being an ISO 14001 (environmental management) and ISO 50001 (energy) certified company. We have also achieved carbon neutrality for our head office, vehicle fleet and transport. Transport accounts for over half of our carbon emissions, therefore it is an important target area for us. From 2015 to 2018 we reduced our commercial fleet’s CO2 emissions by 46.9%. The LoCity e-learning has helped us achieve this via more efficient driving, but it is predominately due to purchasing more efficient vehicles.

‘Achieving carbon neutrality and becoming a CLOCS Champion, demonstrates our commitment to best practice, in line with our FORS Gold status and our company values.’ – Richard Hatcher, Purchasing Director

Given FORS aligns so well with our values and ambitions relating to safety and efficiency, it made sense for us to progress to Gold. Some of our clients request CLOCS compliance and therefore achieving Silver accreditation helped us demonstrate the compliance of our fleet and means that we can credibly encourage our supply chain to also progress onto FORS Silver and Gold. We have written to our top 200 suppliers, encouraging them to achieve FORS accreditation, whilst promoting the benefits of complying with CLOCS. We also mandate CLOCS within our supply chain for in-scope contracts and are active members of the CLOCS working group.

Performance Indicator Improvements

• We undertake a driver health and fitness review every 6 months, asking drivers to declare any relevant conditions. To help drivers improve their health, we offered staff the opportunity for a health check, which 270 staff undertook this year. This gave them key information such as their blood pressure, body mass index and hydration levels, along with advice on how to improve their health and wellbeing.
• Given most our drivers only drive for a small proportion of their working day, our training and recruitment strategy predominantly focuses on bringing new staff into the construction sector, via our successful apprenticeship and training schemes.
• Our operating hours are within normal working hours, with occasional Saturday operations. Noise relating to our construction sites is mitigated via our contract plan and associated construction logistics plan. We aim to minimise peak hour deliveries and use a vehicle booking system to control the timing of our supply chain delivering to site. Our vehicle procurement checklist considers quiet technology and noise specifications when new vehicles are being purchased. To minimise noise pollution, we have put a quieter deliveries toolbox talk in place.
• We are reviewing options for alternatively fuelled vehicles and hope to move towards an alternatively fuelled fleet within 2-4 years. Given the nature of our business and location, modal shift is not possible for our operation. We have taken steps to minimise vehicle trips and have used the Equa Index data to record the real-life emissions and MPG of our existing fleet and will also use this to inform purchase of any new low emission vehicles.
• We often run internal campaigns encouraging safer and more efficient drivers, & general updates such as winter driving advice.

To continue making improvements to our fleet and improving our operations, we plan to transition more of our fleet to low and zero emission vehicles to continue reducing our carbon footprint.

In summary, we are proud to sustain our FORS Gold accreditation and doing so has been invaluable to help us make significant reductions in collisions, fines and emissions. Looking forward, we will maintain this momentum by trialling alternatively fuelled vehicles and analysing collision trends such as at our Health and Safety Committee meetings.