I have been asked on a number of occasions how Tarmac, as a large business with a large number of vehicles and drivers, manage their FORS accreditation to;

• Ensure CLOCS compliance where required
• Manage the cost of compliance
• Manage the practicalities of achieving and maintaining compliance.

As we all know a small change in the FORS standard or a wish to progress from Bronze to Silver can have a large financial and practical impact when an organisation has a large fleet or number of drivers.

For Tarmac the approach is simple. It may be a cliche but how do you eat an elephant – one bite at a time. So instead of looking at the issue in its entirety break it up into bite size chunks. In other words, instead of having a single accreditation for the whole business our accreditation is broken down by business streams and/or regions in line with the business and customer needs. This allows us to focus our resources where we need to.

The FORS Standard allows organisations to define the scope of the accreditation e.g. an individual depot’s HGV (over 3.5 Tonnes) operations. This accreditation can then be recognised as a ‘sub ID’ within the main company ID. This ‘sub ID’ can then progress from Bronze to Silver without the need or encumbrance for the whole company to progress. The sub ID must operate within the rules of its accreditation, whilst the other operations do not impact on its status. Thus an element of the business can be CLOCS compliant to service a particular contract or customer without the need for the whole business to become compliant overnight.

One final thought – the life cycle of vehicles can be anything from 3 or 5 years upwards – when ordering new vehicles consider the specification and future proof your investment as much as is possible.

If anyone requires any further advice I can be contacted through the CLOCS team: support@clocs.org.uk 

Garry Lewis
Transport Standards Manager – Tarmac