Glasgow City Council achieves IRTE accreditation in local authority first
Thursday 12 March 2020
Glasgow City Council has become the first local authority in Scotland to receive an accreditation in both workshop and engineering best practice. Audited by FTA, the business organisation representing the logistics sector, Glasgow City Council passed a series of inspections to achieve IRTE (Institute of Road Transport Engineers) accreditations for its two workshops; its ten-strong workshop engineering team also achieved their irtec licences.
To achieve IRTE Workshop Accreditation, applicants have their road transport workshops audited by trained FTA examiners; those that pass show they are following best practice. Auditors test compliance in areas such as premises, equipment, technical staff, management, clerical staff, documentation, quality and appearance. The Council’s workshop team have also all received their irtec licences, which validate their competence in maintaining the wide range of commercial vehicles used in delivering council front-line services.
Steven Nicholas-Smith, Technical Consultant at FTA comments: “Throughout their IRTE audits, the team at Glasgow City Council showed an incredible dedication to achieve the highest standards of workshop compliance and safety; we are thrilled to present them with this accreditation. And with all their workshop engineers securing their irtec licences, there is no doubt the Council is operating to the highest standards. We hope other local authorities are inspired by Glasgow City Council’s success and aspire to achieve their own accreditation.”
Alex Colquhoun, Group Manager of Fleet Maintenance & Repair at Glasgow City Council, comments: “This accreditation is testament to the hard work and commitment shown by the GCC team. With the rapidly changing fleet profile the council is committed to upskilling our workforce to ensure we maximise the use of new and improved processes to ensure our fleet is not only safe and reliable it is maintained to the highest standard with minimised downtime. The council’s fleet strategy identified that highly skilled staff are key to the optimising the use of our fleet and the IRTEC standard is an excellent first step in that process, which we are delighted to have achieved. In due course we intend to work towards the operator Earned Recognition Scheme.”
For more information on IRTE qualifications, please visit https://irteworkshop.org.uk
Efficient logistics is vital to keep the UK trading, directly having an impact on more than seven million people employed in the making, selling and moving of goods. With Brexit, new technology and other disruptive forces driving change in the way goods move across borders and through the supply chain, logistics has never been more important to UK plc. FTA is one of the biggest business groups in the UK, supporting, shaping and standing up for safe and efficient logistics. We are the only business group in the UK that represents all of logistics, with members from the road, rail, sea and air industries, as well as the buyers of freight services such as retailers and manufacturers whose businesses depend on the efficient movement of goods.
