Citation
(2013), "Fork-lift competition drives home safety message", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 45 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2013.03745eaa.006
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Fork-lift competition drives home safety message
Article Type: Notes and news From: Industrial and Commercial Training, Volume 45, Issue 5
A UK builders’ merchant hosted a special fork-lift driving competition organised by its materials-handling partner, Briggs Equipment.
The Travis Perkins Driver of the Year challenge was put together to drive home health and safety messages and to focus attention on damage reduction, in a fun way.
Some 26 Travis Perkins operators from across the UK were selected using statistics from the Speedshield monitoring system, supplied on all its fork-lifts.
Liam Holland, the Travis Perkins transport manager, explained: “Safety is our main priority and we are always looking at ways of reinforcing this message across the company.
“We felt that the challenge would help our drivers better to understand the importance of safe driving, not only for their benefit but also for the company and our customers”.
Leigh Edgley, Head of National Accounts at Briggs, explained: “Events like this are a great way to encourage operators to engage in best-practice driving behaviour as the games are devised to test a number of skills.
“As part of the challenge, we developed five games including the high ball, wide load, theory test, tag and stack and pre-shift check. Practical games involved lifting and manoeuvring objects through tight spaces or stacking them on top of each other. Further theory tests and pre-shift checks examined knowledge of fork-lift safety”.
All drivers were judged by Mentor Training, which looked for accuracy of movements, consistency of speed and attention to safety.
This was the second driver challenge Briggs has organised for customers following the success of a similar challenge for Homebase operators in 2011.