BDC Magazine - Bentley Motors Article - 2011

SAFECONTRACTOR MANUFACTURING: BENTLEY MOTORS

INSIDE THE WORLD OF

BENTLEY When you’re in the business of producing world-renowned luxury motor cars that have a tradition of power, poise and craftsmanship, you need the right conditions to build them

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SAFECONTRACTOR MANUFACTURING: BENTLEY MOTORS

hen you’re in the business of producing world-renowned luxury motor cars that have a tradition of power, poise and craftsmanship, you need the right conditions to build them.

Which is partly the responsibility of Graham Chadwick, who as Environmental and CDM Manager for Bentley Motors has to ensure that all construction and maintenance on the company’s Crewe site is conducted in a safe manner and is environmentally sound.

He also has the responsibility for a parts and accessories warehouse on the other side of town but the seventy acre Crewe production facility is his main concern.

Graham’s role is all about the safety and environmental aspects of any construction, refurbishment or maintenance activity on the site, but not the actual control of the activity itself. “We have a maintenance manager that looks after his maintenance staff and decides what his priorities are,”

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he explains. “I make sure that his people and any contractors remain safe.”

Nor is he responsible for the health and safety aspects of the normal operation of the factory, for which there’s a separate health and safety coordinator. But the nature of the operation means there is some cross-over between the roles and so close working between the different parties. What does also happen, when there is any development or refurbishment planned, is that Graham comes into the picture early. He says: “We’re normally involved just after the concept stage.

“Once there’s an idea of what something will look like, then we’ll start to have a few outline conversations of what the effects might be. This is probably initially from an environmental aspect.

We then also look into the effect of doing a major modification or a new build, or a demolition and then a build. After that, we move on to the maintenance of the equipment or the building going forward.”

In effect, it’s a cradle to grave involvement with every building on site and there are quite a number of them. That means there’s always something going on with a current phase of major rework just finished and now moving into refurbishment and maintenance activities on site that will last for the foreseeable future, at least for the next twelve months or so.

A typical example is the paint shop, which is around twenty years old. “That’s currently going through a three phase upgrade,” comments Graham. “The first phase was last summer and the second phase will be this summer, somewhere around the shut down period.

Consequently, there’s an awful lot of planning going ahead for that at the moment.”

CONTRACTOR ROLE The jobs range in scale from a few thousand pounds, where Graham’s team will fulfil the principal contractor role, through to several million

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pounds when a third party principal contractor will be brought in. In these cases, a contract may involve several sub-contractors working through the principal contractor and Graham’s team has to ensure they all work effectively and safely.

“We run what I like to think is a robust system of job registration,” he explains. “The project engineer who is going to undertake the build or the modification will get risk assessments and method statements from the various contractors. These are then put into this job registration process, which is built

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up jointly with the project engineer and the contractors. That then comes to my team and we approve it or make modifications.”

Once they are on site, all contractors are controlled through SLAs and KPIs, with the focus being firmly on any that don’t perform correctly and where improvement is needed. That also applies to the risk assessments and method statements that come through Graham’s team for approval, as he recounts: “We had an instance where we had three companies that had standards that were lower than

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SAFECONTRACTOR MANUFACTURING: BENTLEY MOTORS the rest. So we ran a couple of training sessions and explained to them what we expected to see and what we felt was missing from their submissions. I have to say, it was a resounding success. So we do work with them and we try not to use a big stick. If we have to, we will, but that is rare to be honest. It’s very much a partnership in helping them to help themselves and help us in that same way.”

A very big exercise over the last 18 months or so has aimed to formalise all the various health and safety policies. That has produced a purpose built safety management system, which has brought together around 55 different health and safety policies that are all connected to the activities that go through the department.

Graham says: “At the minute, we’re just bedding in our safety management system and we’re probably half way through the first round of audits on the 55 policies. We went through the process because we recognised we’ve got a good system but it hadn’t been formalised from a safety view point for contracts control. That’s really what we pushed along to do. We wanted to make sure that, if somebody important was to leave today and somebody new started tomorrow, with a small amount of training and effort they could pick that up and run with it very quickly. So those policies are there now, which drive the system along.”

FINISH OF 6 HOUR RACE 1929, JACK DUNFOE AND BARNATO WINNERS

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SAFECONTRACTOR MANUFACTURING: BENTLEY MOTORS

OVER EIGHTY HOURS INVESTED IN CREATING THE PERFECT FINISH

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SAFECONTRACTOR MEMBERSHIP A major benefit to the team is the company’s membership of both SAFEcontractor and CHAS. The former’s audit procedures, in particular, provide a significant advantage in that they are in accordance with CDM 2007 ACOP legislation and Bentley uses the service to check new contractors. “It gives us a minimum standard that they’ve achieved,” explains Graham. “We can then look at a new contractor at the stage two process to ensure that, for example, they’ve got sufficient resource, are available at a particular time, they’re done other activities of that size and that nature. We just have to make sure that they’ve got the skills and resource. The baseline is that they’ve passed the accreditation with SAFEcontractor.”

He’s also happy with the online support that’s provided and the fact that, if something has to be resolved or there’s a need for a particularly quick audit on a contractor, it just takes a phone call to sort out. There’s also the assurance that, when contractors are being checked out, it’s being done by someone with the appropriate experience and knowledge.

Graham says: “That gives us the confidence that we’re doing the right thing by bringing in external

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ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY AND TRADITIONAL SKILLS

health and safety professionals. They are professionals in a particular field to suit an activity. If it’s a steelwork construction, then the person who’s doing the audit has a lot of steelwork experience and, similarly, if it were an asbestos remover, it will be someone who’s got experience in that field. So they do match their skill sets to the appropriate skill set for the company we’re looking at.”

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The result is a thorough audit rather than a box ticking exercise and one that will go right down through the chain to ensure all sub-contractors are covered and no unforeseen issues arise. Using SAFEcontractor to do the checks also allows Graham’s team, which comprises five full time staff plus two half time contractors, to do other things.

“Prior to using SAFEcontractor, we were doing the

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SAFECONTRACTOR MANUFACTURING: BENTLEY MOTORS

SOME OF BENTLEY’S 900-STRONG ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT AT BENTLEY’S FACTORY IN CREWE

assessments ourself,” he recounts. “It became pretty much a full time job for about a person and a half a week. Now that we’ve outsourced the work, we can get out and do more of what I term ‘policing’ around site. We can check on what’s actually happening on the site rather than sitting at a desk assessing contractors.”

POLICY ENFORCEMENT Extra policing means being able to deal with anyone who on a rare occasion may transgress the rules. It also means being able to ensure environmental policies are enforced, which is the other side of the job. The absolute bottom line, as stated in the company’s environmental policy, is that it will achieve legal requirements. However, it almost always goes way above that and has to comply with some 26 Volkswagen Group standards that also go above the legal minimum.

Graham says: “Since we have been owned by VW, environmental considerations have really gone up the decision making tree at Bentley. That particularly applies for things like energy use and insulation but it goes back further than that. It even goes

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down to checking for any ground contamination and having consideration for any animals or insects that may be living there. We had to delay one job a few years ago because we had some bats.”

The emphasis on environmental matters has resulted in an increased level of recycling for waste on the site, which two years ago averaged around 65%. A target was set to achieve an 80% recycling rate within two years and this had reached 84% by the end of last year. That was achieved with the support of the workforce around the site, who were provided with segregated waste bins within office and production areas. This enabled a lot of line side and office segregation of waste at the outset and this was then improved more by the introduction of a new recycling centre that had facilities to further segregate waste. As a result, Bentley can now recycle items such as wood, paper, various metals, any cables and plastics, which has enabled it to get over its 80% target.

“One of the big things that we spent time and money on last year was our surface water on site,” comments Graham. “It goes out through an interceptor across the road from the main factory and into a local stream. As you can imagine, we’ve got very tight consents on that so we invested a lot of money in online monitoring and the facility for us to shut down the exit into the stream if we felt at any stage that we could be a polluter. Over the last seven years, we’ve gone from ten minor incidents down to zero last year, which is the first time we’d managed that. That’s been achieved due to this system and education on site.”

TRAVEL SCHEMES Another big initiative has been the company’s Green Travel Plan, where it operates a car share scheme. There are in excess of 3,500 people workCONTINUED ON PAGE 1514

TODAY, BENTLEY CONTINUES TO LARGELY HAND BUILD ITS CARS BUT USES MODERN TECHNIQUES TO ENSURE A LEVEL OF PRECISION NOT PREVIOUSLY POSSIBLE

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SAFECONTRACTOR MANUFACTURING: BENTLEY MOTORS

THE COMPANY BENTLEY MOTORS was founded in 1919 in London by Walter Owen Bentley, noted aero engine designer, amateur racer and car importer.

His stated aim was “To build a good car, a fast car, the best in its class”.

Prior to starting the company, he was known for aero engines fitted to the Sopwith Camel and other aircraft during the first World War. The company’s first auto engine was built in 1919 and the first three litre production car was completed in a Cricklewood new factory in 1921. WO Bentley believed motor racing was the best way to promote the company and a Bentley won Le Mans five times between 1925 and 1930, then not again until 2003.

Other cars followed, with a six cylinder 6.5 litre starting delivery in 1926 and a 4.5 litre the following year. The company suffered in the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s, eventually going bankrupt and being bought

by Rolls-Royce after seemingly on the brink of being sold to Napier.

Production moved from Cricklewood to Rolls-Royce’s Derby plant, where the first Bentley built there was the 3.5 litre ‘Silent Sports car’ in 1933. The cars built at Derby were Bentleys in their own right and did not share engines or chassis with the Rolls-Royce cars made there.

From 1937 onwards, however, and for almost the next sixty years, there was a widespread sharing of components between the brands.

When production switched to Crewe in 1946, the Bentley Mark VI/Rolls-Royce Silver Wrath

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was the first car off the line and the most successful Bentley ever. The Bentley R Type was produced until 1955 when the first car completely designed, developed and built at Crewe was launched, the Bentley S1/ Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. The S2 followed and the Bentley T Series/ Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow was launched in 1965.

The 1980s saw an increased focus on the Bentley brand and the Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Division was sold to Vickers. As a result, the Bentley Mulsanne/Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit was the last where Bentley undersold its Rolls-Royce equivalent. From the 1982 launch of the Bentley Mulsanne Turbo, known as the ‘Crewe missile’ due to having better acceleration than some Ferraris, the brands diverged. The Bentleys were aimed more at business people while RollsRoyces were intended for landowners, causing a surge in Bentley sales.

The last dual badged car, the Bentley Arnage/Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph, was launched in 1998. Soon after this, Vickers announced it was to sell both Bentley and Rolls-Royce, with Volkswagen buying the former and BMW the latter.

The change of ownership resulted in increased investment and the development of new models. These included variations on the Arnage and the Continental. Today, Bentley continues to largely hand build its cars but uses modern techniques to ensure a level of precision not previously possible.

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SAFECONTRACTOR MANUFACTURING: BENTLEY MOTORS ing at the site and they don’t all live in the immediate locality. People travel in from various places so Bentley has a website where people can enter their postcode and be matched to other people that work on the same or similar shifts and in the same area.

That initiative alone is estimated to have saved 612 tonnes of carbon last year.

There’s also a cycle to work scheme that might seem insignificant to many but does help to keep people involved and, when added to the rest, makes a considerable difference. A recently introduced sustainable purchase supply agreement with suppliers for car parts is now being transferred over for the suppliers that undertake modifications and new builds on site to ensure there’s a consistent approach to all suppliers in terms of sustainability.

Added to all this is a big push to reduce energy use, which not only helps the environment but also makes a contribution to the company’s profitability.

Low energy lights are increasingly used. “We currently use T6 fluorescent lights around site, which I think is the top standard,” remarks Graham. “We’ve also got a couple of areas where we’re trialling LED lights as well and I think that could be our next move.”

There was a look at the viability of installing solar panels on roofs around the site but, with an installation agreement imminent, the government cut the feed-in tariff and upset all the calculations.

However, as Graham confirms, the deal isn’t dead yet: “We are going to go back around the loop and look at it again because the cost of the panels has dropped by 50%. The solar companies now sell it on a different model. Before it was free electricity and they’d take the feed-in tariff and the cost of the installation. Now, they’ll do the installation and it’s a purchase agreement on the electricity where you

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SAFECONTRACTOR MANUFACTURING: BENTLEY MOTORS tend to pay 15-20% less than your current rate. But we were very close to it and we are in the process of looking at it again currently.”

WORKING ARRANGEMENTS One of the biggest contributors to energy saving is working a 37 hour week in four days rather than the normal five. Whilst this doesn’t reduce consumption by a fifth, it does make considerable savings by focusing production in fewer time slots. The overall outcome of all this is that, although production increased tenfold from 1,000 in 2000 to 10,014 in 2007, and had recovered to almost pre-recession levels of 7,003 in 2011, energy used on the site is down 22%. This, claims Graham, is a phenomenal achievement: “By reducing the energy, we’re also helping the business profitability as well. Everyone’s aware the cost of energy’s going through the roof and it’s a benefit to the business and also a benefit to the world by driving our usage down.”

Having become the first UK car plant to gain the ISO 14001 environmental management standard in 1999, Bentley repeated the achievement when it was the first to get the new ISO 50001 energy management standard. This recognises the company’s improved energy performance and efficiency but involved a long process to satisfy all necessary requirements. Graham says: “I started on the journey in January of last year, obtained a copy of the standard and did a gap analysis. I found out where we were weak and where we had strengths, then worked accordingly. We wrote new policies, changed policies, trained people and took the necessary measurements. The biggest task of all was getting that out because we employ 3,500-4,000 people now on site. So getting each and every one of those involved to some degree was a difficult challenge.”

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THE FACTORY BENTLEY’S CREWE factory was originally built in 1938 to produce aircraft engines in preparation for the coming war. It was intended as a ‘shadow’ factory so that production would continue in the event of disruption elsewhere.

When the war ended, all aircraft engine production was concentrated in Derby and the Crewe plant was used to produce motor cars, with output switched from Derby. The first car, the Bentley Mark VI/Rolls-Royce Silver Wrath, was produced there in 1946.

After the sale of Rolls-Royce to BMW and Bentley to the Volkswagen Group in 1998, all Rolls-Royce production moved to a new plant at Goodwood and Crewe concentrated solely on Bentley cars. The VW Group invested £500 million in the plant over the next two years to allow an expansion of the Bentley brand through new models. This required an 18-month construction programme involving over 400 contractors, resulting in changes to the production line, new roadways, a lorry park and new logistics centres.

More recently, Bentley has received £1.68 million from the government’s Regional Growth Fund to

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create additional manufacturing jobs and training plus a further £3 million to support the development of a new powertrain application.

Over 3,500 people are now employed at the Crewe site, with an average length of service of eleven years. It is Bentley’s single production facility and the site also has research and development, engineering, sales, service and administration as well as production. The company is the third biggest investor in R&D of all UK car companies.

PRODUCING THE CARS Bentleys have always been known as largely been hand built cars. Although this tradition is generally continued, a degree of automation has been introduced to increase efficiency, resulting in about 150 hours being needed to build a Continental GT against the 400 hours that were needed for an Arnage. This compares to around twenty hours to build a typical family hatchback and reflects the high degree of hand-craftsmanship still applying for a Bentley.

One of the main features of Bentley production is attention to detail. As an example, every component on each car is logged on computer, enabling it it be tracked back through each stage of its development.

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BODY ASSEMBLY HALL Each Bentley body comprises over 540 components and it takes about three weeks to turn them into a complete bodyshell, with around 35 bodies produced every week.

Hand-held plasma welding guns are computer controlled so that the 6,500 spot welds on the body sections are positioned accurately.

A computer-controlled press is used to press outer skins onto hinged components, achieving in twelve minutes what used to take a day.

The whole build is to a high level of precision, with 2,500 measuring points being checked. One in five components is chisel checked for structural efficiency and twice a year a completed body is taken apart.

PAINT SHOP There are 2.2 miles of conveyor track, 16 stages of development and 120 processes to create a Bentley’s high lustre finish. Some 90% of the materials applied are for durability and the balance to achieve the high gloss finish. Cars are output in 26 standard colours and non-standard ones to match customers’ specifications.

The whole process can take up to eight days and starts with a phosphate process that prepares

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the body to accept paint. The body is then dried and submerged in an electro-coating bath. Seam sealing and dry sanding are carried out by hand to eliminate imperfections, grey primer applied and an all-over primer coat is sprayed on. The results are inspected and then touching in and dry sanding take place.

The body is cleaned before two base coats are applied using water-based paints to prevent harmful emissions. A flexible clear lacquer coat gives a high lustre finish and stone chip protection.

The spray booth is climate controlled and the lacquer is applied by robots that replicate a human sprayer at peak efficiency. Underseal is applied at the oven stage followed by ten hours of sanding and polishing to achieve a mirror finish.

WOOD SHOP Most Bentleys have the familiar walnut burr veneer that is produced from the root ball of the tree. Each veneer is unique and marked with the vehicle’s chassis number.

The Wood Shop employs eighty craftsmen who take thirteen days to produce a set of veneers. Only the highest grade wood is used in its original colour.

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Around 60% more veneer is used per car than twenty years ago and 24 leaves are required per vehicle. Each is shaped and pressed to fit then individual car sets are cleaned and prepared manually. Wax-free lacquer is applied over five days with three days to cure. Each is sanded and has wax polish applied before buffing and fitting.

THE HIDE SHOP Only A-grade leather is used in a Bentley with seventeen standard colours available. Around 400 separate pieces of leather trim go into each car and 64% hide usage is achieved — the best in the industry.

The trim takes up to six days to complete, with the steering wheel alone taking up to fifteen hours. Hides are pre-tensioned and checked for imperfection while the panels are digitised into a computer so that patterns and markings can be established.

State-of-the-art equipment is used to cut the hides, with the sets inspected before the pieces are sewn together. Different sewing teams are responsible for front and rear seats, fascias and the rest, with each signing their own work. Finished items are electronically tested and inspected under lights to ensure there are no imperfections.

THE CARS Bentley’s model range continues the tradition of cars with power, poise and craftsmanship and is based on two lines — the Mulsanne and the Continental.

The Mulsanne is a powerful and elegant car and is Bentley’s current flagship vehicle. It features a 6.75 litre V8 engine that was developed specifically for it and which delivers power, refinement and efficiency. In conjunction with an 8speed automatic transmission, it delivers reduced CO2 emissions and a potential 15% fuel saving when compared to the previous V8 engine.

The Mulsanne’s body is designed to appear powerful and agile while the headlamps and grille give the feel of iconic Bentleys of the 1930s. The interior has the usual high quality wood veneers, leather hides, solid stainless steel and deep pile carpets with classic Bentley heritage and styling.

The Continental is available in various models — Flying Spur, Supersport, GT and GTC, with four door, coupé and convertible versions. They feature a technologically advanced twelve cylinder, six litre power unit that can run on sustainable bio-fuels, sharp contemporary lines and a stylish cabin that features touch screen technology.

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SAFECONTRACTOR MANUFACTURING: BENTLEY MOTORS DETAILED CHECKING IN THE INSPECTION BAY

Getting the message out is probably the most crucial element in the success of any environmental or health and safety policy or procedure and the challenge is to do it effectively. Time spent writing policies and procedures is wasted if those affected don’t read them, don’t understand them or ignore the contents.

“You need to do it in a manner that engages with them,” explains Graham. “It’s very easy just to turn out a document in a policy style and expect people to read and understand it. Sometimes it has to be done in that style so sometimes you have to spend the time taking people through and train them on it.

Other times, when you’re just giving them the information about energy use in their area, they can read the numbers, can see graphs and can see, when they’ve done an activity, what effect that has had, whether it will be positive or otherwise.”

COMMUNICATION METHODS Communicating the information for the new energy management standard was through a variety of methods that included using local area champions and feeding information out through newsletters.

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This allows people to know what’s happening and, more importantly, shows where they can have an affect and how they can help towards the aims.

These are tried and trusted methods for Bentley, which have proved effective in the past. They’re used, for example, when there’s a project to be run in an area of the site.

Graham says: “Either myself or one of my team will get involved in that. We’ll go along and support it as best we can, find information for them and perhaps suggest different alternatives. But, more importantly, we’ll close that loop with them and

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then we’ll tell them what difference is actually made or what has been achieved.”

Closing the loop is important because people can see the benefit of what they’ve done, are kept involved and are therefore encouraged to do more in the future. Consequently, they’re encouraged to make suggestions on health, safety and environmental matters. Again, these are all fed through the network of local area champions. “We have monthly meetings with the champions,” comments Graham.

“They then go back out to their areas and they will share information with their teams. That’s where a

BENTLEY EARLY PRODUCTION

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SAFECONTRACTOR MANUFACTURING: BENTLEY MOTORS lot of the ideas are generated. What also tends to happen is, when I send a newsletter out, I can almost guarantee I’ll get somewhere between five and eight questions and sometimes ideas back as well from people around the site.”

GOOD MANAGEMENT PRACTICE In many cases, it’s not about having special initiatives to focus on environmental and energy saving matters. In Graham’s view, it’s simply good management practice and an everyday feature of the business: “Whatever policies we adopt, we always try to take the best environmental route and also the most safe route that we can and that’s what our policies drive us down. It’s not that we would do anything different for a particular area of the site.”

A seventy acre site with over 3,500 people working on it will always have changes that require attention to health, safety and environmental issues.

Consequently, for Graham and his team, there’s always something new on the horizon. He concludes: “Last year we achieved the ISO 50001 energy management standard. This year, we’re about to embark on the same journey but with a Carbon Trust Standard.

Gaining it will acknowledge us as a company that takes carbon seriously, drives it down and reduces it to its minimal level for the activities that we undertake.”

BUILDING THE BODY BEAUTIFUL, BENTLEY CRAFTSMEN AT WORK

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www.bentleymotors.com Tel: 01270 255155

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