FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

The safety measures we have installed on all our lorries include sensors for detecting cyclists, video cameras for seeing into blind spots, and side guards which push cyclists away from the lorry in the event of a collision.

wisely. All our heavy vehicles are standardly fitted, or retro-fitted, with cycle safety measures: sensors for detecting cyclists along the side of the vehicle, video cameras for seeing into blind spots, etc. Our drivers regularly take part in the ‘Exchanging Places’ course, which is run by the Metropolitan Police in conjunction with TfL, and which gets lorry drivers onto bicycles and gets cyclists into lorries, so that each of them learns to see road safety from the other person’s point of view. Cycle safety may seem a small issue for a company, or for a CEO, to concern themselves with, compared with the purchase of an Asphalt Plant or more glamorous things of that kind. But even as I write these words, cycle safety in London has hit the news and become a hot political issue. I am not suggesting that cycle safety will change the fortunes of any company. But I am suggesting that paying attention to detail is what leads to innovation and success. When I stopped to look at a waste tip in a concrete-manufacturer’s yard in Caerphilly back in 1986, what I saw changed the course of my life, and altered the direction and fortunes of F.M. Conway Ltd. Most other people at that time considered waste to be a ‘small’ detail. They were wrong. But when it’s your business, when it’s a family business, every little bit of it matters; and no detail of it, and no person within it, is too small to pay attention to. And what my experience has taught me is this: it’s only when we really pay attention to what we are looking at that we see anything at all.

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