Lee Green - Building the right cover

Give an overview of your company.

With an annual turnover of £2.1bn, Tarmac has over 12,500 employees worldwide and between 450 to 500 sites in the UK alone, featuring quarries, building product depots and concrete plants.

What fleet insurances do you place?

The group's fleet insurance covers over 3,000 vehicles, ranging from contracted owner-driver hauliers to company cars and vans. Our entire fleet policy is placed through Towergate Risk Solutions Telford, part of the Towergate Group, which is also our underwriter.

Describe your broker relationship.

I'd sum it up as hands-on. We speak over the phone a couple of times a month and we see them quarterly. Biannually, we review claims performance figures and analyse the data on what is driving claims. We're primarily interested in creating a safer working environment for our employees and owner-drivers. We also need to look at the costs in greater detail in order to manage risks better and hopefully, as a result, drive down our premium.

Risk management is very important to us and this is an area, where we've looked for more clarity from our broker. The data they supply in the form of management reports needs to be reformatted in a way that actively allows us to manage people. We need specific reports to create strategies for our managers in tackling critical risks and unseen costs. We also develop training around the causes of claims and to be able to respond proactively to new or growing risks. I'm pleased to say TRS Telford is responding very positively to this.

Our broker is also particularly good at making us aware of the tools available to manage our risks in a wide range of areas, from driver training to driver-profile and driving licence checks. We are also working closely together on a new telematics project to track and map driver behaviour and this is certain to have a significant impact on our understanding of risks.

Tell us about your claims processes.

With over 3,000 vehicles insured, we have a continuous claims process. Company employees are all aware of the forms they need to fill in and where to send their claims. Our brokers deal with the ongoing process and our cost centre managers highlight and report on any additional or unexpected costs to the company.

Drivers with a telematics device follow a rather different process, depending on the type of incident. Following any incident, we expect more information will be taken earlier directly with our insurers and thereafter reported to the fleet managers.

How are you looking to the insurance industry to help you in the future?

I've already mentioned the importance of first-class and well-directed management information. We also look to our broker and insurer to help us to develop specific training for our drivers and key operators to target the key risk areas. The role of technology in these areas is also important.

Another area where the industry can help is the thorny area of data protection. We're increasingly finding people running scared of the Data Protection Act and it would help us considerably to have a clear route mapped to help us navigate our way through the obstacles.

How is your business coping with the current economic environment and what challenges do you face?

The well-publicised woes of companies in the housing market are inevitably having an impact on our business. The fall-off in house building is also flowing through to other parts of our operation. However, there are parts of the construction industry where activity remains resistant to the credit crunch; the South-east, for instance, has been buoyed up by the project for the London Olympics of 2012.

We are inevitably experiencing a major downturn in business, which intensifies the pressure on cost control through active risk management. However, I know that when the recovery comes, as a robust and well-managed business, we'll be in a strong position to respond to the opportunities.