Westminster Waste Ltd – Going for Gold

Westminster Waste Ltd – Going for Gold

Westminster Waste Limited is a family run company formed in 2010, bringing together a team of experienced staff with the aim of building the finest Construction/Demolition waste recycling company in London.

Still a young company, we are leading the way in ensuring zero of our waste goes to landfill, and building the most efficient and reliable fleet in the industry. We’re proud to put our name to it says David Tucker – Director, David Tucker is our Director and elected Fuel and Emissions Champion and he explains how important FORS is to our Company.

We came across FORS when tendering for work across London. When we looked at the requirements and benefits of joining the scheme we saw that they fitted in perfectly with our ethos of improving safety whilst complementing our drive to improve fuel efficiency and reduce our environmental impact.

We take compliance and safety very seriously so we achieved our Bronze and Silver Accreditation first time. FORS did help us by providing training and tools that improved the policies and procedures.

The performance management toolkit really helped us set our targets for reducing our carbon footprint and improving our MPG. FORS has helped us improve our filing systems and procedures.

‘FORS has helped us achieve compliance and safety’. – David Tucker Director

All our drivers have completed their Safe Urban Driving course. We have also invested heavily in vehicle safety systems cameras, nearside proximity sensors and audible alarms for all our vehicles. All our drivers have also completed FORS E-Learning modules.

‘We have increased our fleet by 130% since our baseline year.’ – David Tucker Director

We have also increased our MPG across the whole fleet by 5.60% compared to our baseline year. We achieved this by making sure we always selected the best route possible to all our sites and we plan ahead before leaving the yard.

 

 

MPG

Incidents

Number of Vehicles

Aug 13 – July 2014

5.36 2 10

Aug 17 – July 2018

5.66 5

23

Percentage improvement 5.60% -150%

130% increase

  • We get all my drivers to complete a comprehensive Medical Declaration on a annually basis even though the FORS Standard states once every 5 years. It’s also mentioned in the drivers handbook that if they at any point in time start suffering from a medical condition they need to notify the company ASAP as well as if they need to start taking medication prescribed by their GP or over the counter drugs. We will then investigate it to see if it’s still safe for the driver to be driving for the company and we may even ask the driver to get a letter from his doctor informing the company if he is still able to drive for the company. We will then start doing more driver assessments on the driver to make sure he isn’t a risk to the company or anyone on the road.
  • We have recently adopted a recruitment policy to try and help us recruit young drivers into the Transport industry.
  • As we operate a waste transfer centre most of the noise comes from our plant equipment and not our lorries. All our vehicles are fitted with White Noise Reversing alarms. We have completed a Noise assessment at our site which shows all noise generated is below 84 Decibels. The only noise is generated when we start our vehicles and do our defect checks, drivers then leave the yard and the only noise that is generated is then from our plant equipment. We don’t have any gates or shutters we open that make noise either.
  • We carry construction and demolition waste to and from construction sites within the M25. We move skips to and from construction sites. As we rely on our customers asking us to collect construction and demolition waste from various construction sites within the M25, we never know where we are going until they need us. Therefore, we can’t afford to try and move anything via barge or train as we collect all the skips from building sites and there is no other method than using a lorry to get it off site. Using a Lorry is the most cost effective way of moving our clients goods. All our vehicles are noe Euro 6 complaint. We have looked at electric vehicles and because of the weights we carry and the fact that our lorries go on construction sites no manufactures have produced an alternative fuelled vehicle that can carry the weight we do and go over the same terrain we do.

We will continue using what FORS has taught us to improve our MPG and reduce any wasted idling we might have.

Gaining FORS Gold Accreditation shows how dedicated we are as a company to improving road safety and the safety of all vulnerable road users in London as well as nationally. We will continuously use what FORS has taught us to help reduce our carbon footprint and make the roads so safer for everyone that uses them. We have also managed to make a significant saving by reducing our fuel usage and improving our MPG.