My name is Diane Gadd, I am co-owner at DWG Scaffolding and Brickwork Limited. DWG is a family owned scaffolding and Brickwork Company based in Surrey. It was established in 2012 by my husband and myself and is now run by five directors whose passion for safety is at the forefront of our business. We supply Scaffolding and Brickwork to major projects in London and the South East.

Becoming FORS accredited not only set a standard for our fleet operations by also helped us with our environmental obligations, through Fuel Card Services we closely monitor not only how much fuel we are using but also the impact our fleet has on the wider society.

We recently replaced an older truck for new and we have already seen a marked improvement in fuel usage vehicle reliability helping us maintain the FORS requirements to reduce CO₂ emissions, lowered NOx and Particulate Matter emissions. Our plan is to replace another truck this year to continue the path to a cleaner environment.

We work closely with our drivers and fully investigate all PCN’s and incidents, by getting an understanding of why they happened helps us make sure that we do not see a repeat.

DWG Scaffolding and Brickwork Limited became a Bronze member back in 2015. As a company, we were looking at how we could run a compliant transport fleet and our client base were requesting all their sub-contractors to be FORS Compliant.

Going into our first Bronze audit, we were nervous about the amount of work that potentially was involved. However, we found the whole process much easier than expected and were surprised to see that we had many of

the processes and good practices in place throughout the company, they just weren’t documented as well as could be. Going through the FORS Bronze process enabled us, as a company, to formulate a good management system that pulled together all the excellent practices and ensured that we had a good structure in place to achieve FORS Bronze and work towards our Silver Accreditation.

We immediately saw the benefits of the FORS Standard and looked over a period of time to develop our fleet to meet the silver requirement. With the assistance of an external, Transport Consultant, we successfully received silver accreditation in 2018

We believe that driver development and training is one of the key factors in the continued improvement of our fleet and with this a reduction in the damage to our environment. All our drivers complete annual driver assessments where training is highlighted and training plans established. Over the past year, some of our drivers have needed to renew their CPC training and we highlighted the FORS Professional training courses as part of their training such as Safe Urban Driving and LoCity training. Every six months, we have a targeted awareness programme and for the start of 2021 we choose Mental Health as our chosen topic. Addressing workplace mental wellbeing can help strengthen the positive, protective factors of employment, reduce risk factors for mental ill health and improve general health. For these campaigns, we carry out toolbox talks, awareness sessions with our in-house H&S Manager, toolkits and a poster campaign displayed on the Drivers Noticeboard within the canteen.

We believe that the training FORS has to offer our drivers has improved their driving ability and as such we have seen an improvement in our fuel efficiency and emission output.

“Positive reinforcement of good safety observations and displaying a good, safety culture within the organisation” –  John Kelly, DWG H&S Manager

“Owing to the difficulties faced by many businesses during 2020 due to COVID-19, our data has been difficult to analysis. We have seen a significant reduction in the distance our vehicles travelled during 2020, but an overall increase in the fuel efficiency of our vehicles. We believe this is down to continued investment in our driver training programme and investment in upgrading our fleet of vehicles”  – David Gadd, Managing Director

	No of Vehicles	Distance travelled km	Fuel used litres	Incidents	Nox (kilograms)	PM10 (kilograms)	CO2 (tonnes)
2019	4	80639.00	22950	1	147.3489	2.2053	59.4256
2020	4	39604.00	4257	3	723670	1.0831	11.0229
		-50.89%	-81.45%		-50.89%	-50.89%	-81.45%

A behavioural safety programme (Good Catch Scheme) that is currently being promoted, by both our in-house H&S Manager and our Transport Consultant, throughout the whole of the DWG workforce is a behavioural safety process that identifies and reinforces safe behaviour and reduces unsafe behaviour

Driver health and wellbeing is always our top priority and along with the FORS requirements for eyesight checks and medical declarations we operate an open door policy so that the drivers can raise concerns at any time.

We do not have a high turnover of drivers, we have not seen a driver leave in over four years. Our long-standing reputation as a good employer supports new drivers being recruited by recommendation alone. We do have a recruitment process in place should it be required.

Our industry is one of the most heavily regulated. To that end all our operations are constantly being measured for noise internally to keep a check on our impact on the livelihood of our staff. Vehicles are selected for not only fuel efficiency but their noise impact.

Part of the reason for our move of operating centre this year was to find a safer area for our staff to operate daily. We replaced our fork lift trucks with newer quieter trucks and the yard itself being flat concrete is quieter to operate on.

Noise assessments produced for this year’s Silver accreditation at the new operating centre proved to be much quieter than the previous years.

We are constantly looking for alternatively fuelled vehicles but the type of work, distance and stresses we put on our vehicles stops us from considering anything else at present.

Moving forward into 2022 and to help improve air quality and improve upon our emissions, we are looking to modernise our fleet further with the replacement of one of our older trucks to ensure that we meet all the environmental and safety requirements

We continually promote FORS at every level within our business and advertise our transport H&S culture throughout social media, advertising and sponsoring a local football team/stadium, advertising and sponsoring at motor racing events throughout the UK.

Scaffolding has a predominately poor reputation throughout the construction industry and we continually strive to go above and beyond to show that scaffolding contractors can and do work to a very high safety standard.

We have seen many changes to our Management System since becoming a FORS accredited organisation and the company has established an Information Management System that is ISO accredited. This has massively impacted the way we manage our fleet and our drivers on a daily basis. To achieve Gold Accreditation would be a demonstration of the hard work and commitment from all our staff from the Directors and all the way throughout the company to include our site operatives – to improve safety throughout the construction industry is at the forefront of everything we believe in and strive to achieve.

Diane Gadd Director

 

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