ABC Building and Construction Depot are one of the few specialist builders’ merchants who are dedicated to serving trade customers with a unique mixture of range, price and availability. Having been established for over twenty years we are exclusively geared up for professional tradespeople. Ensuring they get what they need, when they need and where they need. In demanding times, where time, money and reliability count for so much, we see our role in making it as easy for our customers to do what they need to do for their business.

With over 20 years in the industry, ABC Depot started from humble beginnings and through hard work, determination, and ambition, we have grown into a dynamic and multi-disciplined organisation built around the needs of our customers. As a multi-disciplined organisation covering all aspects of the construction industry, we strive to not only deliver on time but on budget and endeavour to work to our core values which have been the backbone of this business since it’s conception while continuing to introduce innovative solutions and services to support our customers projects.

At ABC Depot, we continue to meet new challenges head on, investing in our service offering and delivering on our core values to ensure our customers’ expectations are exceeded and we look forward to showing you the benefits of working with the Allneeds Group. Says Jamie Butler – Transport Manager.

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.

After passing our Bronze audit, it was our aim to achieve Silver and Gold Accreditations which will help us to promote FORS and its benefits across the though industry. It assists us in maintaining and continually improving our road safety, compliance and environmental impact since we passed our initial Bronze audit 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.

This year we have updated our Driver’s walk round check sheet, and added a driver’s declaration referring to fitness and lawfulness to drive, and not driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. We have dedicated a section to the FORS safety equipment to ensure our fleet is fully compliant at all times. We have also increased the number of E-Learning modules for the driver’s and transport staff to complete, as these modules provide the perfect tools to keep everybody up to date.

‘FORS continues to help us to make improvements in all aspects of the business. Our compliance, road safety, environmental awareness and training remains at the highest standards.’- Jamie Butler Transport Manager

‘Our fleet is 100% Euro 6 compliant now.’ – Jamie Butler – Transport Manager and our elected FORS Fuel Emissions Champion and Road Risk Manager.

FORS Gold accreditation demonstrates to all our clients and competitors that we take compliance, safety and emission awareness very seriously. Our FORS Gold accreditation continues to add value to our company, and it ensures that we maintain the high standard that is required in the construction industry.

• From 1^st March 2019 to 28^th February 2020 we have reduced the number of parking fines and charges by 7.14% compared to the previous year.

We have increased our MPG across the whole fleet by an average of 0.23%. In 2018 / 2019 we achieved an average of 8.80 MPG, where in the past 12 months we have increased it to an average of 8.82 MPG.

	MPG	Number of Parking fines and Charges	Number of Vehicles
March 2018 – February 2019	8.80	14	12
March 2019 – February 2020	8.82	13	11
Percentage improvement	0.23% Improvement	7.14% improvement	8.33% decrease

• We ensure that all of our drivers complete a comprehensive Medical Declaration on a yearly basis, even though the FORS Standard only requires this to be done every 5 years. Our Company Policy states that all drivers must notify any changes to their medical condition to the company as soon as possible, and if they have started taking any medication prescribed by their GP or any other over the counter drugs. The company will then investigate and check the medical condition and medication against the government list of medical conditions that could affect their driving. This is to determine, if a driver is still safe to drive a company vehicle. In some cases the company would request a letter from the driver’s doctor to confirm his fitness for driving. Alternatively, the driver will be referred to Occupational Health for further investigation and examination. The driver will not be able to commence driving duties until he receives the all clear.
• We have recently adopted a recruitment policy to encourage young drivers to pursue a career as a HGV driver and to choose the Transport Industry as their career path.
• We only have 1 Operators yard and it’s in the middle of an Industrial Estate. We use our yard for parking our lorries and loading our products. Servicing and cleaning is done by main dealers at their premises. We don’t have any gates or shutters to make any noise either.
• Due to the distances our vehicles travel and the weights/type of products they carry, we haven’t found any suitable alternative vehicle. All our vehicles are Euro 6 and use Adblue to help in reducing our carbon footprint and improve our MPG. We do everything possible to reduce our carbon footprint through better planning, promoting our anti- idling policy, and replacing our older vehicles with newer Euro 6 models.

It’s a huge advantage for the group to be FORS GOLD accredited as the scheme is highly recognised as the leading standard in the construction industry. The industry is changing, and in the last couple of years more and more contracts are demanding FORS Silver as mandatory, instead of FORS Bronze. Many mandatory Silver projects reduce the requirements of day to day paperwork for FORS GOLD holders, as well as offering preferential delivery slots and speedier process on sites.

We promoted FORS by sending all our clients and customers a letter informing them that we are currently FORS Silver accredited and are in the process of applying for our FORS Gold accreditation and strongly recommend they do the same as we feel FORS is such a valuable scheme in terms of saving vulnerable road users lives making sure companies run the most fuel efficient and safety vehicles they possibly can.

Gaining FORS Gold Accreditation is important to the company and shows our committed dedication to improving road safety, the safety of all vulnerable road users whilst reducing our carbon footprint. Our aim is to continue and improve our partnership with FORS to evolve best practice and to maintain and improve our already high standards.

Website: http://www.abcdepot.co.uk/

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*Please note: All published FORS Gold case studies have been submitted by the accredited company named above and transcribed verbatim