National Express sees major benefits from DAVIS platform
Leading international public transport provider, National Express, has seen major benefits in licence checking and risk management since implementing Licence Check’s award-winning DAVIS platform for its UK drivers.
In the UK, one of the latest parts of the Group to join Licence Check’s DAVIS platform is National Express West Midlands, the market leader in the largest urban bus market outside of London. With a fleet of over 1,600 buses, National Express employs over 5,500 bus drivers across nine garages in the West Midlands.
To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of onboarding drivers, management reporting and internal auditing, National Express West Midlands has now implemented DAVIS across its entire bus operation. It joins other parts of the UK business, including National Express’s coach operations in the South East and the accessible transport arm which provides home-to-school services for special education students.
National Express West Midlands had previously used another licence checking system which involved a large degree of manual intervention and proved very difficult to integrate with its internal audit processes.
The bus operator began to see benefits virtually straight away. Users have found that the DAVIS platform is much faster, more streamlined and hassle-free, with a variety of methods for onboarding drivers, including electronic card readers, and providing dashboard-style management information reporting to see at a glance those areas requiring attention.
Another major benefit from a risk management perspective was the ease with which DAVIS integrated with National Express’s driver risk profiling tool. It is able to feed relevant information about each driver, including current licence status, and any penalty points or driving convictions, into the system.
Drivers complete an annual online eyesight declaration to show whether they have a O1 restriction on their licence and require glasses for driving. The results are stored securely in the document library within DAVIS so that the renewals process can be easily managed.
The collection and centralisation of all this information on one platform assists the internal audit process. Crucially, it also helps National Express to easily identify where driver improvement is needed to reduce risk, with individual training and coaching provided to support driver development.
Jenny Tocknell
Jenny Tocknell, Head of Operational Safety and Compliance for National Express West Midlands, said the DAVIS system had made the management of driver risk much more streamlined, efficient and effective.
“DAVIS is very easy to use and gives a detailed oversight of our workforce. It allows us to easily identify and reduce risk while supporting the individual needs of our drivers.
“We have had very positive feedback regarding the benefits of the platform from users, including the Unite union, individual drivers and system administrators.
“Depot supervisors have been very complimentary about DAVIS, especially when compared with the previous system which was rated as not being user friendly and required heavy, time-consuming administrative interventions,” she said.
Keith Allen, Managing Director at Licence Check, now part of the Ebbon-Dacs Group, said: “National Express is using DAVIS in a very effective and time-efficient way to manage driver risk across a very large cohort of drivers.
“Where so many drivers are involved it makes absolute sense to move the driver base online, and DAVIS allows their management in a highly effective manner, with a wide variety of onboarding methods available and very clear and succinct management information dashboards to allow decisions to be taken very quickly and effectively.”
Read more about licence checking with DAVIS – https://www.licencecheck.co.uk/what-we-do/driving-licence-check/
