Originally developed for the on-road fleet sector, with well over 1,000,000 million drivers engaged over the last 15 years in organisations around the globe, Virtual Risk Manager allows effective FLT operator risk assessment, monitoring and improvement, with many proven benefits to both the users and suppliers of FLTs.

According to the UK Forklift Truck Association's interpretation of government legal requirements, employers have a duty to re-assess and monitor their fork lift operators on a regular basis to comply with the Health and Safety Executive's L117 Rider-operated lift trucks: operator training Approved Code of Practice (ACoP), which indicates that: Even trained and experienced lift-truck operators need to be re-assessed from time to time to ensure that they continue to operate lift trucks safely'.

This is important not only for organisations operating FLTs, but also the FLT supply industry, to ensure that their vehicles are operated competently and legally; as well as offering potential to cut their costs significantly and enhance their brand reputation.

To support this legal requirement, and to allow organisations to minimise their costs, Virtual Risk Manager (Image 1), has been successfully, developed and launched through research and trials over the past 5 years, in collaboration with the UK Forklift Truck Association, other industry experts and a growing number of organisations using the system including DS Smith Packaging, McCains, Zurich, Toolbank and Royal Mail.

Image 1 - Screenshot from Virtual Risk Manager operator assessment program


Virtual Risk Manager is an online tool that allows organisations to risk assess, monitor and improve the safety performance of their FLT operators, comply with Health and Safety Regulations and cut costs of training. It contains several online modules: for operator risk assessment, coaching and monitoring, which have been statistically validated to allow the most at risk people to be identified and managed - BEFORE they get themselves and their employer into trouble (Image 2).

Image 2 - statistical validation for Virtual Risk Manager, showing potential to predict collision involvement for individual operators



Virtual Risk Manager has many uses for operator recruitment, management, monitoring and improvement with many benefits for both users and suppliers of FLTs.

• Pre-employment: Virtual Risk Manager is typically used as part of recruitment pre-screen, interview, induction and new employee training process.
• For current staff: Virtual Risk Manager is typically used as part of the permit to drive process; for selecting instructors and assessors; to evaluate training needs and review the success of training; and for post crash investigation purposes.
• Virtual Risk Manager also has a range of Other uses including: Added value program for FLT suppliers and service providers to assist clients improve their safety; Allocation / choice of the correct equipment for the job; High employee turnover operations; Risk assessments for due diligence, insurance, underwriting and vehicle hire; As part of the business development process; and as a third party service to clients. Includes clear process for operator participation and for management access to data and results (Image 3)

Image 3 -Virtual Risk Manager Information system



In trials undertaken with the UK-based FLTA, and a range of users, Virtual Risk Manager has been shown to be robust and have many benefits:

• Statistical link between assessment outcomes and operators' safety performance - allowing predictive validity.
• 5-20% of participants identified as being at High Risk, 40-60 Medium Risk and 20-40 Low Risk, allowing training to be targeted - rather than taking a broad brush approach.
• Opportunity to meet legal obligations and cut training costs as much as 50% by focusing on areas of greatest need.
• Excellent participant feedback, from both operators and managers.
• Management information to allow wider policy, process and other safety improvements as part of the process of developing a crash free culture (Image 4).

To obtain more information about Virtual Risk Manager please go to the following websites, where you can register for a free trail of the system for a number of you operators:

www.fork-truck.org.uk/refresher-training
www.virtualriskmanager.net/flt/

Image 4 - Crash free culture



For more information please contact:

Dr Will Murray
Research Director, Interactive Driving Systems^®

Email: will.murray@virtualriskmanager.net
Web: www.virtualriskmanager.net
Tel: + 44 (0) 1484 551060