Louise Ward

Said the following about Pentalver Southampton Terminal Team:

“Over the last 18 months, our terminal at Southampton Dock Gate 10 under the leadership of General Manager, Nick Smith, has been preparing for the launch of our Vehicle Booking System (VBS).

During this time, the office staff have been relocated, the existing two-story office block was removed, the area skimmed, and it’s now become part of a continuous in and out roadway. In order to achieve the new operational method, they have had to spin all 6,000 containers through 90 degrees, map their new positions, upload them into the brand-new Terminal Operating System (moving from pen, paper, clipboard and radio operation), install iPad into all machines, and teach the drivers how to use the new technology and map the new yard bays into the system and the minds of the driving team. All of this has been achieved with safety at the forefront and without incident or accident.

Nick is an exemplary leader of our Southampton operation. He has open and accessible communication style and fully appreciates the power and benefits of engaging with his team. That is the way that he has gone about the transformation of the Terminal at Southampton at Dock Gate 10.

Our Southampton terminal exemplifies everything that we had in mind when we launched the 1% safer strategy for 2023 which encourages our workforce to do just one thing every day, to improve our workplace safety. The 1% Safer initiative encourages simple actions to help teams to think about their work environment, activities and processes involved in their work. Before starting work, employees consciously think about how they could improve the safety of their activity or work process – even small adjustments could invoke huge changes to our health, safety and welfare at work.

Always with safety and effectiveness of the operation at the front of his and his team’s minds, Nick and his team have worked hard to identify the areas for improvement, involved the team fully in designing the solutions and the output is clear to see. The site is cleaner, tidier and better organised, but most of all the site team are engaged, proud of their new facilities and demonstrating this in the way that they take care of the site at all times.

Accidents have reduced, and use of the ‘You Said We Did’ board shows how the team are continuing to look for opportunities to fix issues before something goes wrong. This is absolutely the approach that we want to encourage and support in order to continue to improve both our safety and our efficiency as a business. Nick and the Southampton team are an exemplar of the 1% Safety initiative, to encourage others to adopt a similar approach and to realise the benefits.

Our Southampton terminal is now fully live with our new VBS systems and are consistently achieving turnaround times of less than 30 minutes, recently showing an average turn time of less than 21 minutes.

The Southampton team have worked hard throughout this change and should be recognised for their passionate support and exemplary work ethic throughout for safely delivering this significant transformation.“