Announcing the 2026 Samsara Connected Operations Award Winners: Europe

Our customers are our greatest source of inspiration at Samsara. They take what we create and push it to its limits, so that we know what to build next. The Connected Operations Awards exist to celebrate that unique creative partnership and the extraordinary outcomes it produces. Every year, the submissions we receive remind us why this work matters: keeping people safe, helping operations run more efficiently, and reframing digital transformation as a shared endeavour with the people who keep the world moving.  

This year's European submissions raised that bar again. Across every category, what struck us wasn't just the results themselves (though they were remarkable). It was the sharpness of thinking with which our customers approached our products. They are not just using Samsara, but adapting it to their needs and setting new benchmarks of best practice that surprise even us. We’re talking about the fleet managers who spent months earning driver trust before the technology went live, or the ESG leaders who built sustainability programmes around real data rather than annual estimates, and the safety directors who redesigned what "coaching" means from the ground up.

The winners you'll meet below represent the very best of that relationship. Join us in celebrating the 2026 Samsara Connected Operations Award winners and the people behind their stories.

• Safest Operator (UK): Speedy Hire

• Safest Operator (Germany): SafeDriver ennoo

• Industry Innovator: Renew Holdings plc

• Innovation in Sustainable Operations: Lanes Group

• Excellence in Driver Engagement: Sysco GB

• Driver of the Year (Europe): Richard Meehan, JLL

Safest Operator (UK): Speedy Hire

The Connected Operations Award for Safest Operator recognises organisations that protect employees, safeguard communities, and prevent incidents before they occur. This year's winner used fleet-wide data to build a safety culture that turned data into action across every one of its 147 UK service centres.

Speedy Hire is the UK's leading tool and equipment hire company, running more than 1,100 vehicles and serving over 61,000 customers. Speedy Hire deployed Samsara to replace a legacy telematics setup that produced lots of data, but no actionable insights that managers could use to proactively improve safety standards. Managers used AI Dash Cams intentionally, framing them as a safety shield, rather than a disciplinary tool. A fortnightly Driver Safety Group brings together HR, fleet managers, driver assessors, and driver representatives to dig into recent footage and work out the lessons within the data. This complements a structured coaching programme, consistent across every depot. 

This consistency has led to radically improved safety outcomes. Severe speeding fell 85%, general speeding dropped 65%, harsh braking declined 29%, and inattentive driving per driving hour is down 50%. Camera obstruction events fell 84%. Their connected safety policy has also benefited their bottom line. Able to pinpoint accident hotspots by time, location, and vehicle type, managers can brief drivers on how to pre-empt dangers in high-risk areas—helping the company save £490,000 in their insurance costs, with £60,000 saved in excess claims. Speedy Hire have used these improvements in their risk metrics to move to a more cost-effective self-insurance model.

Safest Operator (Germany): SafeDriver ennoo

The Connected Operations Award for Safest Operator (Germany) recognises a fleet or individual in the region that has demonstrated exceptional progress in safety culture and professional standards. This year's winner shows what happens when a fleet commits to proactive safety from the top and brings every driver, and every subcontractor, along with them.

SafeDriver ennoo operates as Uber's general contractor in Germany, managing 627 vehicles across 8 locations with a network of subcontractors. Vehicles operate almost exclusively in dense city traffic. Before Samsara, investigating an accident meant trawling through manual video downloads. Decisions often rested on individual statements with no objective basis. But within 48 hours of the first Samsara deployment, teams were able to reconstruct an incident from cloud footage. The platform soon became the digital backbone of the company's safety strategy. In-cab cameras were introduced, with drivers trained, passengers informed, and the technology framed clearly as a safety measure from day one. After approximately six months, drivers had completely accepted the technology. New drivers learn the system during onboarding, and understand the benefits it provides them personally.

Between May 2025 and January 2026, risky driving behaviour across the SafeDriver ennoo fleet fell 40% and speeding violations dropped 60%. Within the subcontractor network, the results are even stronger: risky driving fell 67%, speeding violations dropped 83%, and collision frequency fell 88%. Accident investigations have been accelerated by approximately 60%, reducing resolution times from several months to two or three months in most cases. In a market where insurance premiums are rising broadly, SafeDriver ennoo reduced its insurance cost per vehicle by approximately 10%. "Samsara isn't just a short-term project for us," said David Richter, Fleet Manager Germany at SafeDriver Group. "It's the digital backbone of our safety strategy. The platform has become deeply integrated into our processes, and today it's impossible to imagine our daily work without it."

Finalists: Barlows, SOCOTEC

Industry Innovator: Renew Holdings plc

The Connected Operations Award for Industry Innovator recognises organisations that put  Samsara technology to novel uses that we’ve never seen before. This year’s winner, Renew Holdings plc, worked with their insurance broker and insurer to build a predictive risk management tool that translates live safety data into insurance cost savings. 

Renew Holdings plc maintains the UK’s critical infrastructure, from railways and motorways through to telecoms, energy networks, water supply, and wastewater networks. Together, its ten independently branded subsidiaries send 2,500 engineers and tradespeople onto the roads each day. But a spike in rear-end collisions and accidents was putting their staff at risk and pushing up their insurance costs. With each subsidiary operating independently and no common technological foundation, management lacked a unified view of the potential causes. Inspired by behavioural science, they set out to re-imagine how they managed risk. 

Once Renew had installed Samsara AI Dash Cams group-wide, they partnered with their insurance broker, Marsh, to build a bespoke Power BI dashboard, layering the telematics data over their insurance claims history. This matched accidents to patterns in preceding behaviours, developing a more informed coaching strategy that delivered safety benefits almost immediately. Across the group, key risk behaviours fell between 30% and 70%, including inattentive driving, mobile phone use, and seatbelt non-compliance. By relaying so much real-time evidence that their safety strategy was working, Renew unlocked major insurance savings. Total incurred losses fell 65% from their peak, and large claims dropped 63%, with the average cost-per-claim falling from £5,107 to £3,503. Renew have since moved to a higher level of self-insurance, reducing both insurance and premium tax costs. 

Finalists: Petit Forestier, FMC Haulage

Innovation in Sustainable Operations: Lanes Group

The Connected Operations Award for Innovation in Sustainable Operations recognises organisations that demonstrate meaningful environmental progress through operational innovation. This year's winner, Lanes Group, built a sustainability programme, grounded on tangible metrics, that holds up to board and investor scrutiny. 

Lanes Group is one of the UK's leading wastewater and drainage specialists, running more than 4,000 vehicles across the country to keep infrastructure working. Using Samsara Idling Reports, they discovered that their vehicles were racking up 12% idling time, equating to thousands of litres of fuel wasted every month. Lanes Group used the data to create the “Fuel Down the Drain” campaign, educating drivers about better fuel habits. Campaign messaging appealed to drivers on a personal level, framing idling as a threat to their health, and that of their families and communities. The company operationalised this message inside the cab, using Samsara to send drivers audio alerts when they left their engines running. Staff monitored their progress on weekly data scoreboards, with top performers receiving personalised recognition messages tying their idling reductions to real environmental outcomes. 

This approach proved far more successful in engaging drivers than top-down lectures would have been. Drivers who felt they’d been overlooked even started messaging managers to ask when they’d be receiving their kudos. Lanes Group surpassed their initial ESG target of a 50% reduction in unproductive idling within four months. Idling fell from 12% to 2%, saving more than 83,000 litres of fuel and an estimated £155,780 while preventing 260 tonnes of CO₂e. The company also digitised 1.3 million annual form submissions through Samsara Connected Workflows, eliminating at least 11.7 tonnes of paper, and saving £145,000 in printing costs. Lanes Group has now transitioned 100% of their car fleet to hybrid or electric, with 28% fully electrified. 

Finalists: Speedy Hire, GRS Group, Veolia

Excellence in Driver Engagement: Sysco GB

The Connected Operations Award for Excellence in Driver Engagement recognises organisations that have achieved outstanding driver engagement programmes, empowering drivers to build safer habits, protecting them from false claims, and delivering improved driver engagement scores. This year’s winner, Sysco GB, transitioned from a business with strong safety standards to one with a genuine safety culture.

Sysco GB is one of the nation's largest food distribution businesses, operating more than 1,800 vehicles across 33 operating locations. By implementing Samsara AI Dash Cams and utilising Driver Safety Scores, they transformed how drivers view technology—shifting from a perception of surveillance to seeing it as an objective tool that provides the evidence needed to protect them. Sysco GB uses Samsara data to recognise progress through an internal recognition programme, rewarding drivers who improve their scores by three to five percentage points over a 30-day period.

Since rolling out Samsara, Sysco GB has achieved significant safety and retention results, reducing accidents by 40% and mobile phone alerts by approximately 98%. The business maintains a national average safety score of 97–98% and has improved driver retention by 13% across the network. By using footage to exonerate drivers from approximately 100 false claims in a single year, Sysco GB has also saved on annual insurance and claims costs. Furthermore, the company treats sustained score drops as a signal for welfare check-ins, providing early-intervention wellbeing support to over 150 drivers.

Finalists: Gigaclear, Grundon

Driver of the Year: Richard Meehan, JLL

The Connected Operations Award for Driver of the Year recognises an individual commercial driver who exemplifies safety, professionalism, and the value of consistent coaching. This year's European winner doesn't just drive safely, he sets the standard every driver around him is measured against.

Richard Meehan is a mobile technician for JLL, a leading global commercial real estate services and facilities management business. In a role where tight client SLAs and the pressure to rush are ever-present, Richard covers the highest mileage in JLL's UK fleet—approximately 32,000 miles a year — while maintaining a perfect 100 safety score and zero events in his safety inbox. With over 25 years of professional driving experience before Samsara arrived in the cab, he has developed an approach to road safety that is entirely self-directed: deliberately padding journey estimates, removing schedule pressure before it reaches the road, and treating every mile as one that reflects on him personally.

Richard embodies what it means to be a professional. His manager is now developing an internal case study around his methods to share across the business, turning one technician's standard into a reference point the whole workforce can work toward. He is also part of a broader safety evolution at JLL: 85 drivers across the fleet have achieved a perfect safety score, evidence that the programme scales beyond any individual. Richard's story is what modern commercial driving looks like—disciplined, data-informed, and committed to raising the standard for everyone around him.

Finalists: Egertons, Groupe Berto, Cappagh Browne

The innovation happening across Samsara's customer base goes well beyond this list. Read the stories from this year's winners in North America [INSERT LINK] and Mexico [INSERT LINK], and see how organisations across every sector and region are raising the bar for what connected operations can achieve.