Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to Driven By Excellence, your trusted place for all things logistics and road safety from PDT Fleet Training. Each month, join host Hattie Hlad as she interviews experts on a wide range of topics within the logistics field.
[00:00:00] Hattie Hlad: Driven By Excellence, your trusted place for all things logistics and road safety. Today we are joined by Andy Smart, an experienced fleet road safety specialist. Andy is one of our own and his current role is head of L&D for PDT Fleet Training Solutions. We're really pleased to have you here today Andy.
We know you've been at the forefront of creating and assuring effective delivery of driver training courses to professional drivers for many years. So today we're keen to hear your views on a number of driver training related topics and attempt to tap into your wealth of knowledge for our listeners.
Andy, let's start with an introduction for our listeners. Can you explain to us all what connects you to road safety and how did you become involved with driver training? Give us a brief overview of your experience and expertise.
[00:00:52] Andy Smart: Thanks for inviting me along today. Well, my journey started in the world of transport and logistics when I was 16. My very first job was from school, and that was a Weybridge clerk in a quarry. So that's where I first had my first experience of learning about sort of transport legislation and weights of vehicles and so on.
A few short years later, I obtained a role as a driver, parcel delivery van driver, and that's how many people get into the transport industry. I later progressed to driving larger vehicles for a couple of different operators, and then I did, in all fairness, get a little bit disillusioned with one of the operators as things weren't working out exactly as I thought they would do.
So I looked for a slightly different role, but still within the transport sector. So I got a job with the Freight Transport Association, called Logistics UK now, and my first role there was as a tachograph inspector, and over the following decade I progressed, certainly learned all the rules and legislation connected to transport and gained the qualifications along with that as well.
In 2010, I was lucky enough to get a role at PDT, which was a smaller company than what it is today. I was immediately taken by the sort of the leadership of the company in terms of being forward thinking and progressive, you know, headed up by the director, Sam Leleu. I was really found my home, and I was allowed the flexibility in the scope to sort of design courses and deliver them the way that I always felt they should be delivered for the drivers.
So it's a great time and it's continued to be a great time ever since. So and obviously in my current role now is wonderful. You know, I mean, I can't think of a better job.
[00:02:44] Hattie Hlad: Oh, that's great. So let's begin with more of a general question related to on-road training. We know that drivers jumping into unfamiliar vehicles is already a sector issue and significantly raises the driver risk level if the training isn't provided. Do you think the issue is more apparent now that with enhanced technology found in modern vehicles
[00:03:07] Andy Smart: Good question. You know, to be honest with you, there's lots of new tech in modern vehicles. Some of them are complicated, and let's face it, who actually sits down and reads the training manual before they drive a car or van for the first time? You know, we can talk about lane assist, or, you know, parking assist, or even automatic headlights that they come on when maybe you don't expect it, if you're not genned up on it.
But, probably one of the ones that I can expand on a little bit further is the introduction of reversing cameras, which we pretty much find in all modern vehicles now, and they are a great aid to the driver without doubt, but you can't just rely on that one aid, you know, if you're only focusing on the camera when you're reversing while you're losing your peripheral vision, not moving your head and your eyes around as much as you should do to look out for verbal road users, pedestrians or people on bikes or whatever it may be and that's relevant. In a supermarket car park doing the shop on a Saturday morning it would be to a driver making a delivery down the high street. So the tech is one big angle on there. Drivers need familiarisation, and they need coaching on how to integrate the tech into their driving style to make sure that obviously they drive the vehicle, you know, efficiently and safely.
It's the early days of tech really, you know, I can see it get even more advanced as we move forward to you know, self driving cars, maybe autonomous vehicles in the more longer term future.
[00:04:43] Hattie Hlad: When we think about modern technologies, we absolutely have to start by exploring the world of electric vehicles, or EVs for short. So, many of our listeners will have driven electric vehicles, but for those who haven't, please can you explain the difference in terms of vehicle operation? Do they need to be driven differently compared to traditional petrol or diesel vehicles?
[00:05:05] Andy Smart: Absolutely. They are very different. It's not uncommon for drivers to approach me and say, well, I'm not getting the extended range out of this electric vehicle that I anticipated or indeed family members that, you know, maybe you've got a hybrid vehicle, for example, you know, they're saying, well, the MPG is less than my traditional petrol car that I had in previous years and to be honest with you. It's because they're not driving it correctly. It is a lack of knowledge, and sometimes lack of skill as well, in terms of maximizing the new technology in these vehicles to gain optimum performance. One of the very biggest differences to electric vehicles compared to traditional vehicles is the fact that they're automatic.
Now, that's a big leap for someone who's never ever driven an automatic vehicle. It's so easy to sit in the driver's seat and basically stamp down your left foot to where you think the clutch is, and then inadvertently, absolutely put your foot on the brake pedal. You know, involuntary sort of emergency stop, again can be a danger to the occupants and indeed other road users as well.
So again, coaching, guidance on that, you know, is something that we find that we do spend a lot of time with when we present training to drivers of such vehicles. The other big element to driving electric vehicles, the other big difference, is the regenerative braking.
[00:06:27] Hattie Hlad: Mm hmm.
[00:06:28] Andy Smart: So when you take your foot off the accelerator, the vehicle slows down quicker than you'd expect.
The benefit of that is though, that it's recharging the batteries. You know, a bit like the Formula One cars that do something very similar as well. So again, you need to get used to the regenerative braking. You need to get used to slowing down quicker. So really, to maximize performance of electric vehicles, the driver needs to anticipate more, you know, they need to plan ahead and this is great, if it's done correctly, because I'd argue also enhanced road safety, is the cornerstone of defensive driving as well, anticipating even more space in front of you, looking ahead, planning. So, if it's done correctly, drivers can not only use their vehicle more fuel efficiently, which is great for the fleet manager, or indeed the individual private driver, and they're going to be safer as well. So, insurance costs and all the other benefits that will come along with it. That's what we promote in our training courses. You know, our expert instructors and trainers, you know, I mean, they know their electric vehicles really well. And that's what they look at.
[00:07:39] Hattie Hlad: So I understand there's a recent study that reports that EVs are involved into 50% more traffic incidents than their petrol and diesel counterparts. It reports the numbers of incidences related to poor driving behaviours. It's mainly fast and sharp acceleration that causes problems. What training do you promote to improve driving behaviours? You touched on that a little bit before.
[00:08:03] Andy Smart: Well, you've done your research on that study. It's reasonably well known in the driver training industry. It was an insurance company that had done the research in Switzerland a few years ago, and it caused a couple of ruffles within the industry at the time. Ultimately, it's all to do with the rate of acceleration of electric vehicles.
Even for really experienced drivers, when they put the foot on the accelerator, it can be quite a surprise of how quick the acceleration is due to the torque of the vehicle. A couple of weeks ago we went to a client's site and they had a new electric vehicle there and we took part in a little bit of demonstration, a little bit of a trial.
It's a safe quarantine area on site, I may add, and the vehicle was a Peugeot Expert EV, which is a smashing vehicle, really good, very impressed with it all. But when we found we undertook slow maneuvering in the yard, don't actually need to put your foot on the accelerator. You can control the vehicle purely from the brake and, you know, in terms of slow maneuvering, reversing, you know, that's great because it's a really nice slow pace and it gives you lots of time to make the maneuvers in a safe fashion. Latterly, we simulated pulling out, maybe onto a main road, and if you put your foot flat to the floor, wow, you do get a lot of speed very quickly.
I think that's where individuals are a little bit surprised about it all and could possibly lead to lack of control of the vehicle if it's not done correctly. So there's a phrase in the driver training industry that's come about because of this. It's called over tapping and trainers are aware of this and they'll put measures in place during the training session to explain to the delegate and get them to demonstrate smooth and progressive acceleration.
[00:09:46] Hattie Hlad: That's amazing. If we stay on the subject of alternatively fuel vehicles, have you created any training material to cover vehicles that are fueled by the likes of liquefy gas or hydrogen, for example?
[00:10:01] Andy Smart: Yes, we have. I think start with hydrogen first. Obviously, many people see it as the sort of panacea of the vehicle fuel moving forward because it is zero emission, the point of use, of course, but it's still relatively early days. To give listeners a little bit more information on hydrogen, especially how the hydrogen is produced, there's different types of hydrogen at the minute.
There's grey hydrogen, which is basically produced by mixing fossil fuel gas with steam. The trouble with this production of hydrogen is bad for the environment. It creates lots of CO2. So there's no point in having a clean end product if the carbon emissions are produced earlier on. There's such a thing called blue hydrogen, which is a little bit better, but that's the same process as the grey hydrogen, but what they do is they basically collect the harmful stuff and bury it under the ground. So again, it's never going to be a good environmental solution to creating hydrogen. The one that we want is called green hydrogen that's when you pass electric through water. Now this is by far the cleanest way to produce hydrogen and that's where the market is going elsewhere the development and the money's being spent in the minute on the research.
It is possible you know there's a couple of places in the country that produce green hydrogen but of course it uses electric and again. to be truly zero emission, the electric needs to be from renewables as well, which is happening in the UK. There's round about 43, 45% of our electric is produced by renewables, you know, be it you know, solar or wind power and so on.
So it's getting there and it, absolutely, it's a really fascinating subject and I'm so delighted to be involved in the logistics in the transport industry at a time where there's going to be so many exciting developments moving forward. For the car drivers, there are two manufacturers, Hyundai and Toyota, that have produced hydrogen powered vehicles. They're a bit expensive, and the hydrogen itself is a little bit expensive, it's charged by the kilo, and there's 15 hydrogen filling stations in the UK.
[00:12:14] Hattie Hlad: Wow.
[00:12:15] Andy Smart: So, which is great, but it's going to be nowhere near enough to service the needs of the general public and indeed the sort of road transport as well.
Moving across to gas powered vehicles. So, there's two main types. There's that CNG, which is Compressed Natural Gas, and there's also LNG as well, which is Liquified Natural Gas, which is produced by reducing the temperature down to liquefy the product. In all fairness, gas power trucks have been used in Europe for many years. You know, they're pretty much ahead of us in terms of the meta vehicles that that they use on gas powered trucks. But we've really over the last four or five years looked at it again in the UK as we need to be looking at alternative fuels. So it's starting to move again. There's various models of trucks that can run on the gas. There's about a thousand gas powered vehicles on the road, but that's really expected to double and triple over the next two or three years. You know, lots of people have signed up to pushing this forward, so expect to see gas powered trucks far more frequently on the road moving forward.
[00:13:27] Hattie Hlad: When we were speaking about the training that you're looking to cover these vehicles, so will the training be practical or classroom based?
[00:13:38] Andy Smart: Certainly in terms of, you know, hydrogen and gas powered, there'll be classroom based, there'll be, you know, remotely online or or face to face. Really. That's not going to change until there's more widespread adoption of such vehicles, and then obviously we, at the time is right, we will get out and we'll be one of the first to get out on the road to deliver training, you know, maybe advice on how to refuel the vehicles and so on.
We have talked to a couple of clients about such sort of training courses, and yeah, it's about awareness at the minute. I think people need, drivers need to know what's going to happen in the industry or what we predict to happen.
[00:14:13] Hattie Hlad: What future holds for sure.
[00:14:14] Andy Smart: Exactly, and put it on their radar.
[00:14:16] Hattie Hlad: That's really interesting. So in regards to classroom based training, do you think this is effective?
[00:14:24] Andy Smart: Again, another good question there, and it's one that I've pondered over for a long time, and the answer is absolutely yes. Do you know what, for what we call on road courses, so the course has got an element on road, what we do at PDT is we like to have a blended course. So maybe the first hour is in the classroom, or if it's on road, maybe one to one with the training material and that builds up trust between the delegate and the trainer as well takes a worry out very often delegates turned up and they're nervous. They maybe never had a coaching or driving assessment in entire lives and might have driven for 30, 40 years. You want to build that bond there so they understand the significance of the course and of course, ask questions. There's other things that you can do in a classroom prior to going out on the road and things like commentary driving, I don't know if you've heard of that phrase you have, but that's where the delegate will drive along and spot hazards, upcoming hazards or potential hazards rather, and take avoiding action or change driving a future on the back of it.
If you do that in the classroom first, is what we do. You know, I mean, you can run through this, we show them a little video, they can have a practice of a commentary drive and then when you go out on the road a little bit later, well, it's not a shock to them, they can fall straight into it,
[00:15:44] Hattie Hlad: Not so daunting.
[00:15:45] Andy Smart: Yeah, without the worry and they can concentrate on what really matters and that is spotting the hazards and the ever developing road situation and that's what we want without doubt.
In terms of longer courses in the classroom, I think we might well touch upon it later, driver CPC. Traditionally, driver CPC has been done in the classroom and most courses are seven hours in duration. So we take a slightly different approach in terms of the classroom training there to make it interactive and engaging. Although we do CPC out on the road as well in the blend of fashion.
[00:16:19] Hattie Hlad: That was my next question, Andy. So let's dive straight in. I know driver CPC training is a subject that is really close to your heart, but for those that may not be familiar with driver CPC, can you explain what this entails? You mentioned classroom, but give us an overview of this.
[00:16:37] Andy Smart: Yeah, Driver's CPC, although there's a few exemptions, basically lorry and bus drivers need to hold a valid Driver's CPC to drive professionally during the living, and Driver's CPC stands for Driver's Certificate of Professional Competence. I've said that a few times over the years. It started in 2008 for the drivers of buses and coaches and 2009 for LGV drivers and was created to improve the knowledge and skills of drivers of large goods vehicles.
It's introduced all the way across Europe, and there's two types of CPC use. Firstly, there's initial driver CPC. So that's for drivers that are new to our industry. And basically, when a new driver goes through the license acquisition process, there's four key modules that they need to pass. And the initial driver's CPC makes up two of those, and then there's periodic driver's CPC training. which is for drivers who've already passed their initial CPC or existing drivers.
[00:17:42] Hattie Hlad: Okay.
[00:17:43] Andy Smart: This is completed over a five year period, it's in five year cycles, and the driver needs to do 35 hours of training pretty much broken up into seven hour chunks. That, in a nutshell, is what driver's CPC is.
On a slightly wider scale, in all fairness, drivers, some drivers being critical of driver's CPC, you know, been the case of, well, you know, you teach me how to do my job, but that's sort of dissolved as driver's CPC has progressed over the last sort of 12, 13 years, really, I first delivered a driver's CPC training course in early 2010.
So what 12 years ago, and I was actually quite surprised about the lack of knowledge of some drivers. Certainly on some of the key rules and regulations like drivers hours rules, you know, I could ask questions to a room full of drivers on a basic drivers hours rules and half of them will get it wrong.
[00:18:38] Hattie Hlad: Wow.
[00:18:39] Andy Smart: Now we've changed our courses. We don't go into a driver CPC session and deliver the same way as we did a decade ago because the drivers' knowledges have improved without doubt, you know, that has worked in that regard. In terms of the knowledge side of things, you don't come across as patronising. Very often they tell you what the answer is to the question and so on, but it's still relevant.
Very often you get drivers taking to one side and say, I never knew that all the years I've been driving. They don't always say in the group in front of their colleagues, but they certainly do it one to one. So we've altered and upgraded the course over the decade, and it's all about understanding your audience and what works.
Our courses need to be engaging. They need to suit different learning styles. You know, a bit of case studies and quizzes are involved and such like, and as mentioned previously, we've have a couple of on-road courses, CPC courses as well to put the practical element into it as well.
[00:19:39] Hattie Hlad: Okay, that all sounds very technical, Andy, but I'm interested to know what knowledge and skills does a trainer needs to deliver high quality driver CPC courses?
[00:19:49] Andy Smart: Well, there's such a range of subject matter that it can be included in driver's CPC and if it's relevant to the driver's job, there's probably a pace in CPC to create the course material. To be honest with you, none of our trainers, and many have been with us for sort of 8 to 10 years. I don't think there's one trainer that delivers our entire suite of courses
[00:20:09] Hattie Hlad: Oh, really?
[00:20:10] Andy Smart: You know, some trainers would prefer the driver's hours and the legislation side of things, some like health and safety, some like the first aid angle and so on.
So you cannot be a jack of all trade. It's known your subject area is what we look for in a good CPC trainer. The background, they've all been drivers. Absolutely. Every single one of the CPC trainers have got extensive on road driving experience mixed in with other qualifications, which does vary. Many of the sort of qualified transport managers, they have sort of a digital tachograph background and qualifications and so on, or they might come from the police and the army. You know, I mean, for the built up their driving skills and then sort of move across to CPC and being a trainer latterly and so it's a diverse sort of background from what the trainers come from. The truth is, and I don't know if I should say this really, but you can have the best presentation. You can have the swishiest PowerPoints in the world, and ours are pretty good, to be fair. But if you've got a bad trainer. It won't be good to drive a CPC session for hours, it's all about the trainers and the way that they deliver the information, the way they engage and get people to participate. You know, that is so, so important. There's times in a driver CPC course when you've got to be very serious. Sometimes you need to slow down the pace. If you're talking about fatalities, you know, we're talking about people's lives. You know what I mean? You know, it's got to be taken very seriously.
[00:21:38] Hattie Hlad: Definitely.
[00:21:40] Andy Smart: Then maybe half an hour later, well, I have a chuckle, have a little bit of laugh and be a bit lighthearted. You know, to be honest with you, when I do a CPC course, if I can't get a chuckle or even a belly laugh at drivers in the first couple of hours, I think I've done something wrong.
[00:21:55] Hattie Hlad: I wouldn't see that happening, Andy. I'd love to be in a training with you. But it's really interesting and it does sound like it takes a comprehensive skill set to deliver seven hours of training. But what about the courses themselves? How would you go about creating a seven hour course, which is both engaging and has those desired learning outcomes? If I think back to uni, for example, seven hours is such a long time for someone to stay fully engaged. I know I'd struggle. So how would you keep me engaged?
[00:22:26] Andy Smart: Good question. That is something that we take a lot of time and trouble over to make sure that the CPC course is, if you take the seven hour classroom one as an example, how it's structured. You know, it must have a start, middle and end is the first thing I'd say. In terms of the subject matter, well, that's driven by the driver CPC syllabus produced by Joutel, now the DVSA.
So we've got to stick to sort of the formula there in terms of the subject matter, and of course, sometimes it's driven by our clients. You know, we do design bespoke courses for clients and they may be building their walk around check procedures or health and safety procedures and many other things as well.
So I've got a good scope of what the CPC course would be about, but in terms of actually building itself, the delegate comes first, always put it in the minds of the delegate to be honest with you on the longer course, I get the big subject, the big meaty subject matter out of the way when the drivers are fresh in the morning, seven hours, as you said, is a long time.
So, I work on the two thirds rule. The first two thirds of the course, you know what I mean, is the big legislation, possibly a big subject matter, and for the last third, loosen up a little bit, but at the same time, pick the pace up and maybe look at sort of two or three different subjects in quite quick succession.
You know, subjects that don't want the whole seven hour on that particular topic, and I find that there's better engagement with that. You know, drivers can be a little bit tired, you know, they're out working all week, maybe Saturday they're doing a CPC course and I don't like using the word, it's not quite right, but you need to entertain the drivers, but that is done for the transfer of knowledge.
It's no good people sat on their board with someone reading off the PowerPoint in monotone fashion. You've got to mix it up. We enjoy putting in case studies and quizzes and engagement. We want the delegates to talk as much as possible, they want to talk about their own stories and situations and scenarios, absolutely, that's what the trainers do. If you're talking online, so remote driver CPC training, well, again, that's slightly different in its fashion.
[00:24:35] Hattie Hlad: So you just mentioned online training and most HGV drivers will know that in the early days of the COVID 19 pandemic, the DVSA granted permission for the driver CPC training to be delivered online for the first time. How did you and trainers find this transition?
[00:24:51] Andy Smart: Well, it was a little bit of a challenge. You know, it was what should we do in terms of delivering driver CPC? We were given the go ahead to deliver online driver CPC training very early in the pandemic. If we weren't the first training provider to do it, we were in the top sort of one or two, to be honest with you.
The first thing was. To rearrange the courses slightly. A lot of the courses I just mentioned are built for interactions for rooms full of drivers. know, and obviously as everyone knowknows now, we're usedzoom, you can't throw an open question out to 15 people in one go because there'd be chaos on the microphones.
So again, the way the course is structured, the way the quizzes and case studies are done, you know what I mean? They're separated out to a slightly more individual basis. From the driver's point of view, well, they were initially a little bit skeptical of it all being online. The average age of LGV driver is 51, you know, so we had a slightly older demographics of logging on to laptops and tablets to begin with and, you know, once they got used to the mic buttons and logging on, it was fine, and do you know what? It worked so well.
[00:26:02] Hattie Hlad: Good.
[00:26:03] Andy Smart: Drivers appreciate the fact that they can do it from the comfort of their own homes, and it saves them time, trouble driving to a venue and that sort of type of thing as well. So they understand the benefits of driver CPC delivered online and we enjoy doing it. Trainers love it as well, and we've progressed massively and delivered a lot of CPC training online now.
[00:26:25] Hattie Hlad: Looking to the future of Driver CPC, I'm sure many listening to this podcast will be aware that following consultation, the Department of Transport have made a number of proposals to change the format of Driver CPC. Andy, what's your understanding of these proposals and would you welcome them?
[00:26:41] Andy Smart: Well, yes, we do welcome them, I certainly do, and that is, again, touching on an earlier question, the driver's knowledge has improved.
Since 2009, and seven hours... Again, as we mentioned is a long time for the last six years or so, I've been quite keen on the possibility of see if we can reduce CPC down to maybe five hours to make it a little bit more possible in terms of the subject matter and so on. So welcome changes. I think change is due.
[00:27:13] Hattie Hlad: Right.
[00:27:14] Andy Smart: How the changes are going to look. Well, we're yet to see, and I don't think there's any timeline for any proposals to be sort of signed off as it were, but just for listeners in terms of the actual proposals themselves, initial driver CPC is going to stay the same.
So that's for new drivers into the industry. International LGV drivers again is going to stay the same. 35 hours of training every five years, where the big changes are likely to come in is for drivers that only drive nationally, only in the UK. I think they're going to call it NDCPC for short, so an acronym there to put in the pot and this is probably going to give the drivers an option of sitting a 50 question test that is created and produced by the DVSA, and if they hit the passmark. They will be given their driver CPC qualification for the following five years. So going to be big changes in the industry without doubt. We have to wait and see, obviously there'll be development work in terms of changing the course material and adapting it for different timescales maybe as well.
[00:28:26] Hattie Hlad: So finally, to round up the conversation with us today, I really want to know what is your favourite course to deliver and why?
[00:28:35] Andy Smart: Oh, that's a bit of a toughie. Well, firstly, due to my compliance background, my background, sort of where it all started, really, was driver's hours rules and tachographs and work in time directive. And I always enjoy delivering that course. There's something about it that I enjoy taking the Maybe the numbers off of a page and explain it to drivers in a fashion that they can understand it, but we improve their knowledge of different scenarios and aspects of the rules.
Compliance is important, whichever way you look at it. You know, I'm focused on that and I find it very rewarding. My other favorite course is called Get to Know Logistics, which is for drivers at the real start of their career. PDT provides training for the government's HGV skills bootcamp. where new entrants are trained, get their licenses and go out to be new drivers, which is more than welcome in the industry.
We do need some fresh blood for sure. So what PDT do at the start of their journey is provide them with a three and a half hour course, which is an introduction to our industry. It starts at the start, you know, in terms of what are the HGV, LGV license categories, know, C1C, C+E and so on. It's all about driving licenses.
We talk about how important the logistics industry is to UK PLC, how important it is to every single person. The public have started to realize that for some of the shortages we saw in the pandemic and so on, you know, it doesn't pull any punches. It tells these new entrants exactly what it's about and what to expect, and it's their opportunity to ask any question related to driving HGVs out on the road.
But what we get from it, what I get from it, and certainly what our trainers get from it, is a great deal of satisfaction. You know, it is a lot of pride that goes into delivering that course. big sense of job satisfaction at the end of it as well. You know, to pass on that knowledge to newbies into the industry a wonderful thing to do. So that's my two.
[00:30:52] Hattie Hlad: Thank you so much, and it's been great speaking with you today, Andy. Many thanks for providing us with such informative answers. Thank you.
It's
[00:31:01] Andy Smart: been a pleasure. Thank you.
[00:31:02] Hattie Hlad: Well, that was a fab episode, wasn't it? So much to take away. Andy really is incredibly passionate about our industry and so knowledgeable.
So I'm really glad we managed to persuade him into our studio. I know I have, and I'm sure you have learned loads from that, especially regarding alternative fuels. Who knew?
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Driven by Excellence. We hope you enjoyed listening, and if you did, please don't forget to click that follow button, leave us a review, or share this episode with a colleague.
For more information and to keep up to date with industry news, head to our website pdtfleettrainingsolutions.co.uk