Transport

Transport policy

It is our policy to reduce unnecessary travel and to utilise more sustainable travel methods or alternatives to travel in order to minimize contributions to climate change, congestion, noise and particulate pollution. 

Our aim is to encourage our employees to change their behaviour to reduce the environmental impact of their home to work and operational travel.

We seek to improve our environmental performance through the investigation and development of new technologies, implementing those that have proven environmental benefits.

Transport action plan

• Continue to measure and quantify traffic movements, road and environmental impacts of our operations to provide an evidence base which can be evaluated to determine appropriate actions and monitor success in pursuit of systematic and continuous improvement.

• Bikes4work is an incentive which forms part of our employee benefits scheme.  This is a cycle purchase scheme for employees to encourage them to consider an alternative to driving to work.

• Provide information for employees on more sustainable methods of travel including car sharing information on pin boards and on our website.

• Where appropriate we provide on site café facilities to reduce the need for our employees to travel off site at lunchtimes.

• Continually monitor the market for alternatively fuelled vehicles and conduct trials where appropriate.

• Continue to pursue measures to improve fuel efficiency.

• Utilise video conferencing as an alternative to travel where possible.

Transport KPIs

• Implement the Works Management programme to 1000 vehicles and 1500 operatives in 2007 to ensure that operational mileage is reduced (optimised).  The vehicle management systems utilise Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) which provides information on vehicle locations and their routes, enabling identification of the correct vehicle to respond to an incident based on distance and availability.

• Encourage the use of video conferencing whenever possible, in particular when journeys between our Northern and Southern operating areas can be avoided.

• Encourage car sharing amongst employees, offering enhanced mileage allowances for those who car share.

• Develop a Green Travel Plan for our new building facility at Hanningfield.

Transport case study

Work Management

This programme is our flagship initiative to support the delivery of an even better service to our customers, while operating more efficiently and effectively. In conjunction with BT we have developed a system which uses the latest GPS/GPRS technology to further improve the management of our field based engineers.

For instance, through knowing the closest employee to an incident, and providing our office and field based employees with the right information at the right time, customers will be served better, the job completed sooner and the risk of a duplicate visit removed.  In one area of the pilot, employees mileage reduced by 34%, making a significant contribution to our efforts to respond to the challenges posed by climate change.

During the ‘Work management’ programme pilot, we fitted over 80 vehicles with Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) combining satellite navigation and wireless links with the office.  This simple device gives our customers a better service because:

• office employees see immediately where vehicles are and send the nearest one to a job;

• data is entered onto the corporate systems immediately so that both field and office based employees have the most accurate and up to date information available to plan jobs and respond to emergencies; and

• data only needs to be entered once, freeing field employees of repetitive administration.

Trevor Jobling is a distribution technician and has worked for NWL for 30 years: “This is one of the best bits of kit I’ve had – apart from a flask!  I have been working on creating the front sheets to make sure the essential information is keyed into the PDA.  We used to have sheaves of paperwork to fill in, but now it is all done on the PDA, from tracking travel and arrival times, to risk assessment, carrying out the work and time sheets.  I found the pilot a huge benefit – we could do more work in a day and it virtually did away with all paperwork.  Now I’m looking forward to the next stage of the programme.  I’ve seen the new PDA and it’s even better!” 

It is expected that the scheme will be rolled out across NW’s fleet of approximately 1,000 vehicles and 1,500 field operatives during 2007.