Haydock Commercial Vehicles keeping a watchful eye on health and safety

With the latest health and safety figures showing that the automotive sector reported nearly 2,500 accidents to the HSE in 2007/8, we can clearly not conclude that the industry has gone far enough to eradicate risk. What is therefore crucial is that it continues to be a priority – not just in the workshop, but also in the boardroom.

This becomes more of a challenge when managing health and safety standards across a group of sites. Being able to know how each site is performing and the risk assessments completed or outstanding can be time consuming and hard to manage.

To make things easier, Haydock Commercial Vehicles, a six site commercial sales and repair business in the North of England, looked into developing a system that would enable health and safety to be centrally managed and monitored.  Rather than choosing to use an external consultant, Haydock wanted the business to retain ownership of its safety issues and therefore installed a web-based health, safety and environment system at each site. The particular system is provided by xCenta Solutions, run by a team of professionals who have all operated in the automotive health and safety arena. With such knowledge behind the system, Haydock had confidence that the advice and assessments provided would enable it to ensure compliance with health and safety legislation.

Mark Robertson, operations director at Haydock Commercial Vehicles, explains more: “We take health and safety extremely seriously and it forms an important point on the boardroom agenda. Therefore, it’s critical that we are able to have a realistic view of where are all sites are in terms of legislative compliance.

“Each site has a health and safety champion who takes responsibility at a site level. It’s their responsibility to implement risk assessments, keep all paperwork up to date and monitor compliance throughout the site. Because the system records all the information virtually, it has the functionality to be able to provide senior management with an analysis of each site. Having such visibility is crucial as responsibility for our customers and employees lies with the management team. It also means that we can undertake spot checks, and obtain updates immediately, without waiting for someone else to provide an overview – it can all be accessed at the touch of a button.

“The system is extremely easy to use, which makes it much more palatable when it comes to implementation. Its regular updates and alerts on risks mean that we can also be on the front foot to guard safety. We are also made aware of the actions recorded by the health and safety champions and if they’re not completed within a defined timeframe, as the system escalates actions all the way to board if necessary. Such capabilities mean that we’re confident that action is taken when necessary, and if not we’re are made aware and can make it happen.

“We certainly like to think that having the xCenta system in place has reduced risk and accidents by identifying training and establishing better housekeeping routines. We know that it’s certainly reduced paperwork and addressed director responsibility issues by providing an audit trail should it ever be necessary.”

Robertson views Haydock’s relationship with xCenta as a partnership. If there is an area which the Haydock feels has a risk that is not covered through the system, the two companies will work together to put an assessment in place so that procedures can be followed to mitigate against accidents occurring.

“Because the system is dedicated to the automotive sector everything within it is specific to what we do and we know that we are benefitting from other automotive companies’ experiences, which means that we can implement best practice,” he adds.

Health and safety needs to continue to be a prime concern for commercial vehicle repair sector and indeed anyone operating in the automotive arena. The Health and Safety Executive is taking non-compliance extremely seriously, with new legislation that came into force in January 09 raising fines for blatant disregard of the law. Recession, falling sales and job cuts should not be an excuse for cutting back on ensuring that your workforce and customers are not put at risk.

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