ACC, Ambuja Cement take the lead in road safety

TBB BUREAU

MUMBAI, JULY 6, 2021

With India leading the way with 11% of global fatalities despite housing only 1% of the world’s vehicle population, Holcim Group’s Indian companies – Ambuja Cements Ltd & ACC Ltd – launched Health and Safety Improvement Plan with the goal of “Everyone should go back home safely every day”.

Health and Safety Improvement Plan (HSIP) was developed in 2020 to improve H&S leadership involvement. Specific measures were implemented to ensure health management, risk management, Lock out Tag out and Try out (LOTOTO) and road safety.

Under the HSIP, ACC and Ambuja Cements have made significant progress in road safety focusing on skills development and driving behavior management. To standardize road safety management, ACC and Ambuja adopted a data collection and analysis through their Transport Analytic Centre (TAC) which uses technology and data analytics to assess drivers’ capabilities on a dashboard and provide them with tailored coaching to further improve their safe driving skills.

DMCs (Driver Management Centres) were established across all plants to provide teams with trained resources to coach and counsel drivers using data from TAC and iVMS platforms. ACC and Ambuja Cement also enabled employees to complete the In-Cab Training and Assessment’ program where they receive classroom training followed by on-road training, also assessed by master trainers.

Key Achievements:

• Achievement of more than 70% in safe km % signifying 70% reduction in the number of incidents and injuries.
• Achieved zero offsite road fatality and zero warehouse incidents.
• Ambuja achieved 56.5% reduction in road injuries whereas ACC achieved 60% decline in offsite incidents against 2019.
• Provided drivers with access to facilities like parking yard, rest shelters, convenience centres, canteen, recreation centres to ensure they feel well-rested, happy and motivated when they set off on to their next trip.
• 7,700+ iVMS devices were installed and 20,000 iVMS devices were fixed by the end of 2020.
• Voice-box was installed in all vehicles to give real-time alerts to drivers, thus helping them improve their driving behaviour on the go. The voiceover is available in multiple languages such as Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, and Malayalam. Our efforts resulted in 38% decrease in harsh driving, 18% decrease in harsh acceleration, and 2% decrease in over speeding count.
• E-Passport documents were issued to enable capturing through Near Field Communication (NFC) tags and tablets. This document includes all details of the driver (training and license, among others) and details of the vehicle (legal requirements and vehicle checkpoints like under-run protection, visibility, seat belt, among others) that are checked every time the trucker or the vehicle enters the plant to ensure the safe delivery of the consignment.
• 23% of the total number of kms driven for movement of raw material and finished goods across the plants were driven by drivers qualified under the Holcim Group skilling programme. This is an important measure towards helping them avoid risk situations while in transit.
• 53% of the total number of kms driven for movement of goods is driven with an active iVMS that monitors the driving behaviour. The more distance covered under this monitoring tool, the better it is for us to make interventions and make our trips safer. While we have surpassed the targets we had set for ourselves, we are striving to cross 80% in the future.

 “At ACC and Ambuja, Health & Safety (H&S) is one of our key values, and road safety is an area that is central to our H&S program,” said Neeraj Akhoury, CEO, Holcim India and Managing Director & CEO of Ambuja Cements Ltd.