Patrick Tuohy – Maintaining Gold

Patrick Tuohy is a small business with 1 vehicle which sub- contracts to Tarmac delivering Asphalt and Aggregate. Patrick Tuohy is the owner of the business which is based in Hayes Middlesex and is proud to have maintained their safety record and transport related fines to nil. Patrick Tuohy explains how they have benefited from a significant improvement in fuel consumption and improved driver training through FORS.

We were introduced to FORS by tarmac and we quickly realised it would help us to achieve best practise and benefit us by becoming FORS accredited.

Patrick Tuohy passed their initial audit first time round, this showed us that FORS would be really beneficial to us as a company in keeping all of our records up to date, and keeping up to date with the latest training courses and industry news.

Once we were bronze accredited we made the most of the benefits on offer especially the e- learning.

 ‘FORS e-learning gives us an easy way to keep drivers up to date and show them what is expected of them.’ – Patrick Tuohy – owner

We found the safe urban driving course particularly useful and informative as you get to see the road from the cyclist’s point of view and understand the dangers they face, we have also seen an improvement in fuel economy and the e-learning modules were particularly useful in helping to achieve this. More recently the security and terrorism courses have provided very useful information.

‘Going into our 2^nd year as a gold operator our business is benefitting all round from being a part of FORS.’ – Patrick Tuohy – owner

Once we were bronze we decided to progress to silver and gold because we could see the benefits it would have on the business, not only in getting more work but with improving fuel economy, driver awareness and making us a more efficient operator all round. Now going into our 2^nd year as a gold operator we feel a lot more confident going into our fors audit as all our files are in place and our safe systems of work tried and tested.

We are proud to maintain our zero incidents and PCN record for the fourth consecutive year.

*Annual improvement in MPG and Incidents per 100,000 Kms

We are hopeful, that with the delivery of our new euro 6 Scania at the end of last year, we can see even further improvements in fuel economy and harmful emissions.

The health and fitness of any drivers we use is taken seriously, any driver whether casual or regular is required to fill out a health declaration notifying us of any underlying issues, these are done every year, we also do eyesight tests every 6 months.

Due to the small size of the company we don’t have a specific recruitment policy, however when a new driver starts with us they are given a 2 week buddying program designed to ensure they are fully trained to carry out their role, we also fund any CPC training required to keep them up to date with all the latest courses and to encourage them to stay with us long term.

Drivers are aware of measures that can be taken to reduce noise especially when working at night and we have carried out a noise assessment of our workplace and have a noise risk assessment in place, which drivers read and sign to make sure they understand the implications things such as leaving the engine running can do to the local environment.

For the type of work we carry out there are currently no alternative vehicles available to us, due to the use of PTO systems, insulated bodies and high load capacity. We monitor industry news regularly to see the latest developments and I’m sure in the future alternative fuel vehicles will be available to our industry.

We aim to make continual improvements to the business and the delivery of our new euro 6 Scania is testament to this. This vehicle has an n3 chassis which gives a much lower entry point and better all-round view of the road. We are also continually reviewing safe working procedures, and driver training as ultimately this will help us become a better and more efficient company and hopefully allow us to expand in the future.

For Patrick Tuohy maintaining our gold accreditation would mean we are continuing to achieve the best possible practice. The training courses and toolkits on offer from FORS ensure we can stay up to date with all the latest news and changes to the industry. Going forward we want to continue to reduce harmful emissions and the impact we as a company have on the environment.