A great celebration was held on the 10th November when the NRSPP closed its sixth in-person Utilities Forum in Melbourne, which was kindly hosted by APA Group. Nearly 30 industry partners came together from 15 different organisations to deep dive into workplace road safety in relation to their sector.
The 2022 forum finally helped get the utilities partners back together in person and provided a chance to look up from their daily grind, explore long-term trends, share insights and approaches to issues, which some thought were unique to them but were in fact common with others.
The Utilities Forum is a unique industry specific session which takes place under Chatham House Rules and takes part in three key stages:
- Partners complete a utilities sector template to understand their driving community and related risk.
- Ice breaker pre-forum session to stimulate thinking and build the forum partner community
- The forum drawing on the template data, explore key risks and how different partners address them.
The ice-breaker sessions were sponsored by the Transport Accident Commission (TAC), which featured a dinner with guest speaker and strategist Katherine Teh on successful change management. This followed an insights session on two of their pilots which relate to the Utilities Sector:
- Operational application of the world first Passive Alcohol Sensor Technology using Driver Alcohol Detection System fitted into a RAV4.
- Corporate Social Responsibility Empowr Mobility Ganbina and Barwon Water Pilot supplied with ex-fleet vehicles from IAG fitted with driver mentoring technology for young aspiring disadvantaged drivers.
The forum took place the next day after the ice breaker, and this is where the power of collaboration and coming together became clear. Conversation highlighted that a problem which one partner might be addressing internally, was found to be common to other organisations within the group. The result, it is so much easier to solve an issue with a team than solo.
Part of the magic behind the forums is the facilitation by Tim Roberts and the data mining and translation by Dr Lucia Kelleher. When combined the discussion comes to life.
Next years forum will be hosted by Optus in Sydney. The forum will draw on feedback from this year’s partners to improve the 2023 event. Overall 100 per cent of attendees that completed the evaluation confirmed they would attend next year.
A report is currently being developed and will be shared with partners and posted to the NRSPP website.