Travis Perkins selects DAVIS for all fleet compliance needs

Travis Perkins plc, the UK’s largest distributor of materials to the building, construction and home improvement markets, has appointed the award-winning DAVIS solution from Licence Check for all fleet compliance requirements across its 4,000-strong vehicle fleet.

Travis Perkins employs 16,000 people across more than 2,000 stores, branches and sites across the country, with major subsidiaries such as Travis Perkins Builders’ Merchants, Toolstation, Keyline, BSS and CCF.

The £5bn turnover Group operates a widely varied mixed fleet of 1,800 heavy goods vehicles, 700 light commercials and 1,500 company cars, plus a further 800 grey fleet cars.

Until September last year, the Group was using its incumbent fleet management provider to meet its complex licence checking and fleet compliance requirements, carrying out licence checks across the fleet every six months, depending on the risk profile of the driver.

However, under the company’s operating licence it has very strong compliance and duty of care protocols to meet and felt a specialised provider would be more suited to helping meet that standard.

After evaluating the DAVIS (Driver and Vehicle Information Solution) platform from Derby-based Licence Check, the business took the decision to switch – a move which has delivered numerous benefits.

Fleet Systems Manager, Jon Lowe is responsible for fleet compliance at Travis Perkins, and heads up a 14-strong fleet administration and compliance team with compliance reporting responsibilities for the company’s 5,500 authorised drivers.

Since switching to DAVIS, Travis Perkins has been able to increase the frequency of licence checks for all its drivers so that now the platform checks 5,500 drivers’ licences every month, rather than every six.

Jon Lowe explained: “With six monthly checks, while we would rely on our drivers to tell us if they have an incident or incur penalties on their licence, there was always a chance, with the time lag, that some would slip through the cracks, creating compliance issues.

“Now, by increasing the frequency of checks through DAVIS, we are able to have a more complete picture of our drivers, ensure that we are legally compliant and can more readily identify which drivers are high or low risk,” he said.

Under the previous licence checking and compliance regime, the business built an award-winning API (Application Programming Interface) called Phoenix to provide drivers’ details to key suppliers including Microlise, its telematic supplier, and Tranzaura, its electronic vehicle condition checking and tacho analysis provider.

This was intended to streamline activities and ensure that drivers’ details were always up to date on key services such as telematics, vehicle condition and tacho analysis, and to eradicate errors of commission at branch level.

By switching to DAVIS, the two systems can now integrate seamlessly and Phoenix is able to provide data directly into the platform, and DAVIS returns it seamlessly to the fleet compliance department every 15 minutes with updates on drivers’ records.

“While we will never be 100% accurate all of the time, because of a highly fluid picture with employees being off sick, leaving the business or changing job roles, DAVIS allows us to aim for 99.5% accuracy.”

DAVIS also allows Travis Perkins to effectively manage the risk associated with its 800 grey fleet drivers by not only carrying out regular licence checks, but verifying that grey fleet vehicles have the requisite business insurance, a current MOT, are fit for purpose and regularly serviced.

Terry Hiles, General Manager at Licence Check, commented: “Thanks to DAVIS, Travis Perkins is managing a very complex fleet risk and compliance picture across a huge and varied fleet, and with many thousands of drivers, very effectively, efficiently and in a most impressive manner.

“We look forward to a very long and mutually beneficial business relationship,” he added.

Licence Check, which now has a record number of 2,500 clients in its portfolio, is the UK’s fastest-growing licence checking business and in October carried out more than 74,000 licence checks – a record number for a single month, and up 31% compared with the same month last year.

Since 2015, the company has carried out more than 2.7m licence checks and has more than 400,000 active drivers on its DAVIS platform – some 80% of which are now classified as low risk.

Licence Check has also signed up more than 400 new clients in the last 12 months alone, and includes major players in the retail sector, logistics companies and local authorities within its client base.