Road Safety Award

Sean McGrae & Mathew Woodcock receive the award for Tarmac from Mike Brown MVO, TfL

Tarmac

Road safety category  - ‘safety of courier cyclists in city density traffic’

Tarmac operate from 330 sites and transport over 70 million tonnes of materials by road each year using a subcontractor fleet of over 800 firms with 1,450 vehicles, together with 1,300 spot hire vehicles and our own fleet of 250 trucks.

Tarmac have taken significant steps to improve the safety of transport operations, one focus has been cycle safety in the Uk cities and particularly London where many cycle couriers operate.

Our solution was two-fold: to improve vehicle safety levels across our subcontractor and own fleet; firstly with investment in a major retrofit programme; and secondly by championing nationwide compliance with the Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS).    

A significant financial investment ensured that all  new vehicles and those being acquired new by contractor hauliers were fitted to the level specified by the Work Related Road Risk (WRRR) standard developed by the Construction Logistics Cyclist Safety (CLOCs) working group. This included side underrun bars for otherwise exempted vehicles, nearside and front proximity sensors, audible left turn warning systems, and signage to warn courier cyclists of the risks around moving trucks.

By early 2015, we completed the retrofit to this standard of 1,100 existing vehicles over 8 years old to this standard.

We identified the importance of FORS as an industry accreditation to uplift standards across our own operations and those of the wider construction logistics industry.

Commenting on Tarmac’s approach to its fleet and work for FORS, John Hix, at the FORS Community Partnership said:

Tarmac's innovative approach to develop an accredited in-house capability to audit its fleet and subcontractor vehicles represents a major corporate commitment to boost vehicle and driver safety standards.  By taking these steps it helped to efficiently drive compliance, embed consistent standards and provide its subcontractor drivers with the necessary training and financial support to adapt vehicles and embrace behavioural change.

Critically, the company has also looked beyond its own transport operation. It has played a leading role in helping the FORS Community Partnership to take accreditation from a London scheme to become a well-known national standard. We needed to engage with the notoriously hard-to-reach owner operator community at a national level and Tarmac’s support was vital to achieving this goal.