Sustainable transport at BAM

Travel and transport are essential to our business, from getting people to and from work, to the delivery of plant and equipment to construction sites. Employees often travel long distances, with many locations having poor public transport links. This leads to high levels of car use, and long hours spent on the road. More sustainable transport can help improve the health and well-being of our staff and is a key part of reducing emissions.

We have worked with the Energy Saving Trust on several occasions (2009/10, 2015/16 and 2019/20) to assess our approach and progress in improving sustainable transport. This provides an important check to ensure we are continuously improving.

Our Performance

We monitor all our significant transport impacts including travel by car for business and commuting (in both company and privately owned vehicles), fuel used in our commercial fleet and travel by public transport and air.

We’ve reduced our transport emissions significantly since 2008 (both in absolute terms and normalised against turnover and number of employees). This includes reductions in our business mileage and improvements to the efficiency of our fleets.

Transport emissions - reduced emissions by 3,094 tCO₂e since 2008

Greening our fleets

We operate a company car scheme and have a fleet of approximately 200 cars. We’ve set annual targets to improve our fleet, offering efficient models that employees want to drive. The average efficiency of our company fleet has remained static at 101g CO₂/km since 2017. We hope to reduce this below 100g through fuel switching during 2019/2020.

Our ‘grey fleet' is made up of approximately 1,200 staff that are given a car allowance to drive their own vehicles. The efficiency of our grey fleet has improved and currently stands at 144gCO₂/km. Employees are encouraged to drive more efficient cars and this is captured through annual surveys.

Our plant division manages our commercial fleet of vans, fitted with tracking systems and speed limiters. This helps to manage drivers more effectively, improves health and safety and reduces fuel consumption. Drivers are also provided with training for safety and efficiency. Our HGV fleet has held FORS Silver Standard for the past two years. Electric vans are used by our FM business for contracts which involve more localised travel and we have electric hydrogen vans being trialled as a future alternative.

Company car efficiency

The greenest route

Every one of our offices has a green travel plan, and we’ve developed templates and guidance for our construction sites, so that they can develop specific local plans for each new project, often linking with local initiatives such as car sharing, park and ride etc.

To encourage greener travel choices, we offer a Cycle-to-Work scheme and supplement this with a ‘green mileage’ allowance which employees claim for cycling or using public transport. Most offices and some sites have facilities to assist cycling e.g. showers, changing rooms and secure lock ups. Employees are also encouraged to use trains for business travel in place of driving.

Staff have taken up the cycle to work offer

The most effective solution is not to travel at all…

Since 2008, we've reduced our overall mileage (including both commuting and business travel) by 4.5 million miles, which is equivalent to around 90,000 hours on the road for 10 years.

All of our essential systems can be accessed online, making remote working easier and safer. Employees are provided with laptops and a secure VPN and we operate Microsoft 365, providing a suite of tools to allow easy out of office / virtual working.

We introduced Skype for Business in 2018 to better connect people and avoid unnecessary travel. Many one to one and collaborative meetings now take place using Skype, both between UK locations and internationally across Royal BAM Group.

To promote travel by train, BAM has an easy, cost-effective, central booking service which allows the company to track train travel. Employees receive assistance with public transport for commuting with season ticket loans, shuttle services and reimbursement for public transport.

During 2019 we are launching an agile working policy to further improve the health and wellbeing of staff and reduce unnecessary travel.

2,310 business miles less per employee since 2008

Incentivising improvement

Sustainable travel is promoted to employees and our HR documents make reference to our sustainable transport programme to ensure new staff know what’s available.

To encourage improvements in our grey fleet we introduced two measures. In 2012 the mileage recovery rate for car allowance drivers changed, now based on minimum 40 mpg being achieved.

In 2011 we also launched a Green Car Award, offering incentives for those opting for more efficient vehicles. To date around 400 drivers have opted for more efficient cars. The awards are based on a target of improving the baseline average efficiency of our grey fleet, and we have now reached the top bands, where only those opting for cars in bands A and B can receive an award.

Over £1 million paid out in 'Green Car Awards'

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