We won the Prince Michael International Road Safety Award!!!

Exactly 5 years ago today, I was submitting our new road safety program to the Executive Committee of Holcim. I had only been 2 months in the company, as head of H&S, and it was the first big step I was taking

At the time, the number of accidents we had was high and it was urgent to act, hence accelerating the strategy work to start implementation as soon as January 1st, 2017.

Statistics were showing that 95% of the incidents came from the driving, and only 5% from the trucks or equipment failure. Considering the urgency and the fact we operate in countries where it might be difficult to get latest trucks, we decided to focus on the driving only.

In terms of number, to try to put things in perspective, we are talking about 2 Billion Kilometres driven each year by about 100,000 drivers in 70 countries, and 95% done by transporters… nothing less than a great challenge

The plan was revolving around 2 main topics.

Selecting and training drivers + Monitoring and coaching drivers on their behaviours.

I remember that when I presented to the chiefs that the main feedback was: but we have done that before, so what will change? Well, like anything in HSE, the devil is in the detail.

On the training side, I went back to super Norbert Cabaret, the trainer who gave me my first defensive driving training 32 years ago, in Nigeria (I have “re-passed my licence” about 20 times again since!)

The “devil in the detail” is to do a very rigorous “select and train the trainers” program, with Norbert travelling in many of our countries, as the first qualified trainer to do it. It was quite a challenging work, being so new to us. I remember how he came back from one country where he had rejected all candidates. We could only qualify the best of the best, as our entire strategy was lying on the shoulders of this new generation of trainers.

In parallel, we developed the monitoring side by putting In Vehicles Monitoring Systems (IVMs) in many of out trucks, allowing to monitor about 1.5B km in real time today. This is not just showing the drivers behaviour in speeding and harsh breaking, but it also allows us to monitor in details our scope 3 emissions, reducing our CO2 by optimizing the routes and the overall network, with great data to work on.

Using these data, we can give feedback to the drivers almost real time, meaning once the journey is finished of course, we should avoid distracting someone who is driving ??, but also encourage good behaviour by establishing data-based rewards.

And this was the start of our data center in India, which since became TAC (Transportation Analytics Center), and Ahmed Zeidan joining the team to start that adventure. It was important for ease of implementation to centralise where the data was going to be treated, so that the countries would concentrate only on the drivers feedback

We also started many initiatives, such as our Women on Wheels program,

5 years later, with a reduction of 75% in the number of fatalities across the group, I could go back to the EXCO and confirm that if you manage the “devil in the detail”, it works.

Finally, it is great to see these 5 years of hard work recognized today as we won the?#PrinceMichael?International road safety award

Many thanks to the team, starting from Astrid van der Burgt, who is now in charge of the program under the leadership of Jeff Giesse,

Thanks,?to the TAC team lead by Ahmed, and to Alex Scheld, as this would not happen without a very close collaboration with the logistics team.

And of course, to all the HSE and logistic managers around the world who are working daily at saving lives on the roads.