Donald Ward Ltd T/A Ward was established in 1940, specialising in the recycling of ferrous metals in Woodville near Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire. In 2002 the company expanded to its second location, a 10 acre site at Ilkeston in Derbyshire, representing a total investment of over £5m. Today Ward has an annual turnover in excess of £140m, employs over 400 people and operates a fleet of over 100 vehicles.
WARD have developed waste management and recycling techniques, saving our customers money and helping them to meet and exceed their recycling targets.
Min Bawa, Senior Transport Manager, has seen significant improvements by using the FORS training and initiatives to facilitate a reductions in fuel use, reduce CO2 emissions, lower NOx and Particulate Matter emissions, improve our road safety record and decrease transport related fines and charges.”
We came across FORS through industry contacts and we quickly realised that it would help us to achieve best practice in respect of compliance and safety and also benefit the business through being in a position to tender for new business. We have been FORS
accredited for 5 years, the last 2 years at Silver and now going for Gold.
WARD passed the Bronze audit first time round, we had worked closely with one of the FORS associates who guided us through the requirements of the standard and worked with us to put together a comprehensive system that we could be easily understood and communicated to all parties, this enabled positive change within our organisation. From these changes we were encouraged to progress to Silver.
On achieving the Bronze accreditation, we decided that it would benefit our business to progress to Silver as this has become the benchmark for compliance and safety standards. We are now on building on this further with going for the FORS Gold accreditation, we want to show our customers that we are leading the way forward and want to be the best in our industry and keep striving for continuous improvements wherever possible
Once we had achieved the FORS Bronze accreditation, we really made the most of the benefits on offer, including the FORS elearning, Toolbox Talks and concentrated our training programme on FORS eLearning and classroom delivered topics. The Transport Manager
has attended the FORS Practitioner workshops, which was initially to meet the Silver standard requirement but this also showed us a clear path that made the Gold accreditation to be achievable. We have had great success utilising the FORS associates and FORS affinity partners.
The performance management toolkit will really help us set our targets for reducing our carbon footprint and improving our MPG. FORS has already helped us improve our monitoring systems and procedures as well as ensuring our compliance and safety records are constantly monitored’ – Min Bawa – Senior Transport Manager.
We are very proud to have achieved FORS Silver recognition and are on the road to Gold. Being able to demonstrate our commitment to safety and reducing our environmental impact is a great achievement. Being a recycling firm means we already do so much to make sure our footprint as a business has a positive impact, but this shows how important it is to us across all aspects of our business.
Achieving FORS Bronze with the progression to Silver has helped us to become a more safety conscientious and productive company – Donald Ward – Director
Performance Data….
- All Ward drivers complete a comprehensive health declaration on an annual basis. It’s also mentioned in the driver’s handbook that if they at any point in time that any medical condition changes, they may affect their ability to drive, they need to notify the company immediately as well as if they develop any medical issues that might affect their ability to safely drive for the company.
- We have developed a recruitment and retention policy that outlines our approach and commitment to attracting drivers into our industry. We have also introduced an internal driver training scheme “Ward’s Wheels”, to help people progress their careers within our business
We will maintain the initiatives provided by meeting the FORS standard in order to continue to improve our MPG and reduce any operational emissions and keep our incidents and transport fines and charges to a minimum.- Our commitment to having a fleet that is 100% Euro 6 vehicles ensures we are also achieving the very best in noise reduction. We have completed the necessary noise assessments at our operating centre and have introduced a Noise Code of Practice that has been trained out to all employees to better manage the noise created by operating and maintaining our fleet of vehicles, this includes reducing noise by reducing out of hours collections and deliveries, utilising vehicle shut off technology to reduce idling when parked along with the ability to isolate night time audible warnings.
- WARD intends to continue in investing in the latest technology and safety equipment.
Replacing older vehicles when the time comes to the newest Euro standard as well keeping up to date with industry initiatives to help drive down fuel consumption and emissions. Low entry and high visibility vehicles will be continually researched, with the intention of upgrading the current fleet.
We have also been developing the movement of recycled metals by rail, our mission is to increase this service to 5 train movements per week, this is equivalent to removing 40 HGV vehicles from UK roads.
At present, there is no alternatively-fuelled/powered vehicles for the type of load, distances travelled and locations of the end user. This situation will be monitored.
We continually strive to deliver high quality standards, sustainable operations and excellent customer service. We continue to improve our metal recycling and waste management services and have been fortunate enough to receive ongoing
recognition and awards for our innovation, investments and teamwork. Our transport fleet is integral to our operations and we aim to achieve the highest standards for our vehicles and our drivers.
Ward actively promotes FORS, proudly displaying the FORS logos on their vehicles, on official letterheads as well as emails. We also include FORS on our company website, use in social media, on proposals for new projects and within our internal newsletter.
Gaining FORS Gold Accreditation will show how focussed we are at WARD to improving the safety of all vulnerable road users, the general public at large and our employees. We will continuously strive to reduce our carbon footprint and make the roads safer. We have also managed to make significant saving by reducing our fuel usage and improving our MPG through our commitment to updating our fleet to Euro 6 that also provides the very latest safety and environmental emission and Noise controls available.
FORS also forms part of our sustainability road map to 2030 – The Ward Way and is integral to us achieving our evidence based targets for carbon reduction as part of the Pledge to Net Zero and the UN’s Race to Zero.
Going for Gold and becoming accredited to the highest FORS Standard will show that Ward is dedicated to continual improvements, across environmental, road safety, driver welfare and driving standards.