Travis Perkins is the UK’s largest distributor of building materials to the building, construction and home improvement markets. The Travis Perkins Group has over 20 businesses in the Group, including the Travis Perkins builders’ merchants, Toolstation and a number of specialists in the civils, plumbing, heating and insulation markets, such as Keyline, BSS, City Plumbing and CCF and many more, operating from over 1900 branches, stores and sites around the UK.
Brian Huckle, Head of Fleet Business Support for Travis Perkins plc, explains: “Travis Perkins has made significant reductions in fuel use and CO2 emissions, whilst improving driver colleague engagement. This has been achieved by implementing a driver incentive scheme that rewards drivers for safe and fuel efficient driving, supported through telematics data.”
Travis Perkins are proud to be a founding member of the FORS scheme. We recognise that standards of drivers, vehicles, operations and the management of fleet activity is of the utmost importance and can vary massively across the industry. Travis Perkins are proud to be associated with a scheme that supports and develops best practice and standards in all of these areas whilst also addressing the negative impact fleet activity has on the environment.
Being an established, long term member of FORS, we are familiar with completing our FORS Bronze audit. Having an annual Bronze audit provides an opportunity to focus our attention on our policies and procedures, allowing us to continually improve.
Travis Perkins plc strive to be leaders in our sector and have always gone above and beyond the legal requirements set out in our operator’s licence undertaking; with this ethos the FORS Gold standard has always been a good fit for our business. A number of our contract customers stipulate the accreditation as part of their supply chain requirements and by being a Gold member means we also meet the requirements of CLOCS. Progression into the Silver and Gold standards has also maintained business focus on our continuous improvement programme above and beyond the regulatory requirements of operating a safe and legally compliant fleet. One such area to speak of is ‘fuel, emissions and air quality’, as set out in S3 of the standard. As more and more cities introduce clear air zones combined with the expansion of LEZ & ULEZ, fuel, emissions and air quality is rightly being pushed up the agenda. Having a fleet as large as ours and having an established fleet renewal programme in place, the option to simply buy new vehicles isn’t always the easiest option available, so we have to look at how we can drive improvements using the resource and technology that we already have.
As part of our professional development plan, the FORS practitioner workshops has broadened the knowledge of our leadership teams across the transport function. Through this knowledge, we have implemented initiatives that have helped to support us in improving MPG, year on year, subsequently lowering our Carbon footprint.
Jon Lowe, Travis Perkins plc Systems Manager, explains: “By embracing the performance data taken from our onboard telematics, we’ve been able to individually grade our drivers based on their driving behaviours on a scale from A to G. The metrics that we measure our drivers against are those that through improvement will return the best results in MPG and therefore drive CO2, reduction in our businesses”.
Ian Mason, Travis Perkins plc Accreditations Manager added: “As part of our drivers’ professional development, and in line with S5 and G5 of the standard, our drivers complete FORS professional LoCity training and FORS professional LoCity eLearning training. The training perfectly complements our incentive scheme, providing our drivers with the awareness and knowledge to achieve best results through adopting ‘best practice’ driving behaviours”
- The driver incentive scheme was gradually rolled out through the Travis Perkins plc businesses, starting with BSS in 2017
- Comparing 2016 baseline data versus 2020 average MPG, the company’s MPG has improved by 15%
- CO2 emissions trending down, year on year
Travis Perkins continues to drive for fleet improvements. Through completing a strategic fleet review, which included evaluating the suitability of alternative fuel types, it provided the pathways on how the fleet may transition in achieving the Company’s Net Zero Carbon timescales.
CCF, a Travis Perkins business, has introduced to its fleet a 27 tonne Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV), which is the first of its size and type in the UK and is the product of three years of development driven forward by CCF. The BEV has been manufactured and supplied through Electra, in order to complete zero emission customer deliveries, from CCF’s Harmondsworth branch, across West and Central London.
Travis Perkins are proud of its long standing relationship with FORS and are delighted to have achieved the FORS gold standard. Industry leading fleet management enables our branches to focus on our customer requirements in the knowledge that we operate a safe and legal fleet at all times across the estate.
*Please note: All published FORS Gold case studies have been submitted by the accredited company named above and transcribed verbatim