A Hectic 24 Hours of Work Related Road Risk

In his latest blog Dave Conway, Quality and Environmental Manager, talks about his visit to the annual plenary meeting of ISO/TC 241 and latest experience speaking at the European Transport Safety Council's conference in Dublin. 

I have had an amazing time since my last blog update.

At the beginning of December, I went to Kuala Lumpur as the UK representative at the annual plenary meeting of ISO/TC 241, the technical committee responsible for the ISO39000 range of Road Traffic Safety Management system, standards. I also had 4 days with Working Group 5 who are developing ISO39002, 'Good practices for implementing commuting safety management'.

It was a very successful few days and, from my point of view, I came away with two key resolutions. 

Firstly, a UK proposal for a new standard for the Ethical Considerations of Autonomous Vehicles, was accepted and has been passed to ISO central to determine which technical committee the work should be allocated to. If no other committee lays claim to it then it will revert to TC241 and be the UK’s responsibility to run with. I’m very excited about this as it is the first new work proposal I have had to front and present, and I have spent 18 months of my own time working on it. 

Secondly, ISO39002 passed the 'committee draft' stage and it was resolved to issue it as “Draft International Standard” for comment, and subsequent vote, world-wide. A positive vote should see the standard published in the autumn. All-in-all, a very successful trip, and I even managed to get to see the city one evening.

January, too, was very exciting. I was invited by the European Transport Safety Council to speak at their conference in Dublin. They wanted to hear how FM Conway had achieved certification to ISO39001, what we did, and our commitment to addressing Work Related Road Risk.

It certainly made for a very interesting, if hectic 24 hours! Leave the office after work, drive to Heathrow, fly to Dublin, dinner, go to bed, get up, attend conference, get to Dublin airport, fly to Heathrow, drive home in a blizzard, and get to bed. I still made it into work at normal time the next day.

The presentation was very well received, and I got some fantastic feedback. My favorite part of the experience was the gentleman who said, “We sat around all day listening to people talk about accident statistics, how they measure them, and how bad the figures are, and finally you get up and tell us all the real world stuff about how FM Conway are actually doing something about it.” 

I have to say, the Irish hospitality was fantastic and they were so welcoming and friendly. They are talking about having a construction-based conference for later in the year and wanted to know if I would be available to talk at it. 

Well… I can think of worse ways to spend 24 hours!