How FORS Accreditation Has Helped One Logistics Business Achieve Operational Excellence

As a Sheffield-based logistics business, our company specialises in groupage services to the metals and engineering sector, as well as palletised distribution through our Palletline network. Some of our customers manufacture products for the construction industry, and we first became aware of the FORS scheme in 2011, while delivering to sites in London.


To provide some background, FORS – or the ‘Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme’ – is a voluntary accreditation scheme that aims to improve fleet performance in London and beyond. It encompasses all aspects of fleet activity including safety, fuel efficiency, economical operations and vehicle emissions.

We immediately recognised that the FORS standard complimented a range of processes that already existed within the day-to-day operations at Shepherds – pivotal matters such as promoting safe working practices, legal compliance and corporate social responsibility, to improve the safety of road freight operations. We saw FORS as an opportunity to showcase our high levels of safe working practices, and to adopt the ‘best practice’ initiatives which FORS were promoting. In 2012 we became ‘FORS bronze approved’, passing the rigorous assessment process at the first attempt.

As an accredited FORS company, we embedded the FORS standards into our company culture, client communications and in-house policy documents. For example, vulnerable road user awareness and safe urban driving are now integral parts of our driver training programme.

Through continuous improvement, Shepherds are now accredited to FORS 'Gold' standard

FORS accreditation now underpins the investments and business improvements Shepherds makes on an ongoing basis. For example, over the last 3 years we’ve invested heavily in safety equipment for our vehicle fleet and have further developed our sophisticated transport management systems to enhance performance monitoring and control. These initiatives were instrumental in Shepherds gaining FORS silver accreditation in April 2014.

So what results have we achieved?

By adopting FORS’ vigorous auditing practices, we’ve achieved clear performance improvements across a range of measures. We also now place greater emphasis on root cause analysis and corrective actions.

Here’s how performance has improved measurably in two key areas:

Time Period	Vehicle Damage % (No. of Incidents into Vehicle Days)	% of Driver Pool Attending SUD/Crossrail Courses
Jan-Dec 2012	0.68%	9%
Jan-Dec 2013	0.53%	28%
Jan-Dec 2014	0.49%	35%

Overall, we strongly endorse the FORS scheme as a means of taking the pulse of a business and driving continuous improvement. Now, in 2015, Shepherds is delighted to be moving to ‘Gold accreditation’ to continue this process.