In the construction industry, safety is paramount: it flows through every part of every company’s operations, including the fleet.

And safety is not a point of competition; companies regularly share best practice with the altruistic goal of improving standards across their sector.

No one knows this better than Paul Taylor, fleet manager at Morgan Sindall. As chairman of the Freight Transport Association’s (FTA) Essential Services Working Group (ESWG), he regularly discusses different ways of working and best practice initiatives with his peers.

Such discussions led to the creation of the Van Excellence programme in 2010 – Morgan Sindall recently passed its audit – and the ESWG continues to drive up safety levels across the construction industry.

“Because of the way the industry works, we are constantly TUPE-ing (transfer of undertakings) workers from rival companies and if the drivers within those businesses are aware of what’s expected from them it makes it much easier. In most cases it’s just changing them to a different handbook,” Taylor says.

“The discussions we have within the ESWG are of benefit to everyone.”

Taylor is responsible for Morgan Sindall’s fleet of almost 1,000 cars, 700 vans (car-derived to 3.5-tonne tippers) and 80 goods vehicles, plus specialist plant trailers.

Vans take up the majority of his time. Cars are leased on with-maintenance contracts via ALD, while trucks are heavily legislated and managed day-to-day by a team of regional transport managers. The light commercials are the biggest challenge and much of it centres on driver behaviour.

“Driving isn’t their main job – they are fitters, utility workers, etc. They don’t see themselves as drivers,” Taylor says.

Around 70% of vans are on flexi-rent with Northgate Vehicle Hire, despite the fact that many of the vehicles are actually kept for up to three years. The nature of Morgan Sindall’s contracts-based business means flexibility is vital. It needs to be able to send back vans with little or no notice.

“We considered contract hire but we need to be flexible,” Taylor says. “This industry is contract driven so our fleet size can fluctuate, anything from a 60- or 70-vehicle decrease to a rise of 100 vehicles.”

The remainder of the van fleet is on three- or four-year finance leases, after which Morgan Sindall will buy the van to run for a further 12 months. “This gives us our core fleet for longer contracts,” Taylor adds.

Two years ago he introduced Northgate’s vehicle management system, which provides all the dashboards he needs to run the business efficiently. Northgate also carries out maintenance of the vans so all of the data sits together on the system.

“The main driver for going electronic was to have a means of capturing the data,” Taylor says. “It gives us valuable management data: for example, our maintenance history which links in with our tracker data to identify driver behaviour which we use to drive down damage, off-hire costs and accident stats.”

Taylor has a fleet development manager within his team who is responsible for analysing all the information, identifying trends and breaking down costs by business unit. Telematics was introduced a couple of years ago.

“We use Northgate; we have a strong partnership with them that goes back more than 15 years,” Taylor says.

Did he have any problems introducing telematics to his heavily-unionised workforce? “No – as long as you are upfront and explain the benefits to the business. it secures their jobs – they accept that.”

He adds: “As trackers have expanded across the business and the industry, it doesn’t matter where a driver works, they will be driving a vehicle with a tracker on it.”

The system has helped to reduce instances of speeding by around 20-30% in the past seven months, with further improvements expected. As Taylor points out, “you can have the safest vehicle in the world but it means nothing if the driving standard  is poor”.

“We expect to reduce off-hire damage, in-life damage, fuel consumption and accident damage by improving driver behaviour. They are all interlinked,” he says.

“As a business, Morgan Sindall is focused on safety. It’s paramount and anything that helps, we do. It is easy to make an argument when it’s related to safety.”

Working at height is a recent example: all Morgan Sindall vehicles are fitted with equipment to minimise the risk of accident. Cyclists are another: all trucks have front, side and rear cameras, side guards and warning signs, and have done for a number of years.

Driver behaviour continues to be the overriding business priority. Morgan Sindall will launch later this year a new “safe and sustainable” programme that will address 12 areas of behaviour, such as basic safety, distractions and winter driving.

It has also updated its driver handbook – a new stipulation prevents drivers from making calls and requires them to keep incoming calls to a minimum – and it now includes a copy of the Highway Code.

Three years ago Morgan Sindall brought together its three construction businesses under one umbrella. The move had a big impact on the fleet with Taylor rolling out his policy to the other two business units and reducing the number of suppliers.

For car contract hire, it resulted in one contract, won by ALD; for van flexi-rent  and finance lease, the contract went to Northgate.

“We wanted one supplier because we like to have strong partnerships with them,” Taylor explains. “It helps with compliance.”

The main challenge in bringing three businesses together under one fleet policy was implementing the new processes in preparation for the introduction, a year later, of the Northgate management system.

With the amalgamation now complete, Taylor’s central fleet team of eight people, plus van administrators and regional transport managers at the larger sites, can now focus on generating greater efficiencies in the business, with the majority of fleet operations controlled in-house.

“We outsource the metal side to the suppliers but we keep a close eye on the management of those assets,” Taylor explains.

“We have monthly meetings with Northgate and we have a portal to log any issues but we speak day-to-day.

“We have strong service-level agreements in place, but if I have to start quoting them then I’ve already lost. They should sit in the background.”

He adds: “The key for us is the drivers and what they are doing with the vehicles.”

Daily driver checks for trucks and vans are tightly monitored. As Taylor says: “The most important check a vehicle will ever have is not the service; it’s the check the driver does every day.”

Certificate of Professional Competence training is carried out by in-house assessors with the key principles cascading down from truck to the van drivers. Driver handbooks and toolbox talks also embrace all drivers, while a suit of 10 training modules are targeted based on the results of the telematics data.

Behavioural comparisons are peer-to-peer. “We don’t say they are bad drivers, we just say they are not performing as well as another driver,” Taylor says. “We target our toolbox talks and coaching at the bottom 10% of drivers on any contract.”

He is now considering rolling a similar process for the car drivers. Access to the necessary data is already available via ALD’s Pro-Fleet telematics system which is installed in all Morgan Sindall’s leased cars.

However, to-date it has been used only to identify fuel consumption and business mileage, with reductions in both since the system went live three years ago – achieved with little input by Morgan Sindall.

“It increases accuracy for every journey. We have seen a 26% reduction in business mileage on cars purely through improved accuracy,” Taylor says. It has undoubtedly saved the company money.

Further cost reductions are expected after switching fuel card providers from Allstar to KeyFuels. Allstar’s introduction of transaction charges instigated the move, although Morgan Sindall also benefits from pump price discounts of between 2p and 4p per litre.

The company has retained Allstar as a back-up due to its wider coverage – it has 6,000 sites nationwide compared to KeyFuel’s 1,700, although usage has fallen to around 30%. However, it will eventually be withdrawn.

“Our dashboard shows a monetary saving each person could’ve made for their business units if they had used KeyFuels rather than Allstar,” Taylor says.

“The onus is on them to change that behaviour.”

Concern over cost of quality scheme

In addition to achieving FTA Van Excellence, Paul Taylor is a member of the Freight Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS), created by Transport for London.

He admits that there is “not a massive difference” between the two, other than FORS being more truck-focused.

However, the recent decision by FORS to move out of London and become a national scheme has seen Morgan Sindall’s membership fees increase more than seven-fold.

“I am disappointed with the increase in costs for the vehicle  and audit fee,” Taylor says.

“We paid £400 last year; this  year it will be £3,000 for the same  qualification because they are  rolling it out nationally which means multi-site audits.”

Members of the FTA’s Essential Services Working Group echo those sentiments. “They feel FORS has changed and it is now imposing another cost on the industry,”  Taylor says.

Could Van Excellence be extended to trucks? “It’s not such a massive step to Truck Excellence – I think they need to look at that.”

From mechanic to fleet manager: Paul Taylor’s CV in brief

Paul Taylor began his career as an  HGV mechanic, before moving into the management of workshops at Brake Brothers. While there he was promoted to fleet engineer before taking up his current position as fleet manager with Morgan Sindall nine years ago.

It was a natural progression, says Taylor, and one that he had mapped out although he adds: “I should’ve made the step-up earlier.”

He put himself through CPC training and undertook the CILT (Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport) management course and when the opportunity came at Brake to move into a more senior role “I leapt at it”, he says. “I saw others doing it and thought I could do that.”

Taylor believes the role of fleet manager should be central to any business running more than a handful of vehicles.

“It is worrying when some companies think they can outsource the fleet and the responsibilities that go with it – that’s not true,” he says.