In 2015 SHP launched the SHP Rising Star Awards to recognise young professionals in health and safety who were raising the bar. Five years on, we have continued to add categories, including Rising Stars Wellbeing and Rising Star Innovation, to recognise achievement in some exciting and developing areas of the profession, to tie in with SHP and Safety & Health Expo’s New Safety and Health campaign and to build on the success of the awards.
All finalists have been invited to attend a special networking event at Safety and Health Expo. Representatives from the London H&S Directors Forum and the judges from the Rising Stars Awards will be meeting with the shortlisted finalists for a series of round table speed networking discussions, after which the winners will be announced.
This is a great opportunity for everyone shortlisted to meet some of the most experienced health and safety professionals leading the major safety critical organisations in the capital and the wider UK, including Acre, APM Terminals, Docklands Light Railway, ISS UK, Sellafield, Siemens, Thames Water and Tideway.
Winners of each category will then be invited to a two-day training programme in London. Day one will give them a chance to hear from several leading Health and Safety professionals on specialist health and safety topics. The second day, in association with Acre Frameworks, will focus on developing soft skills such as leadership, communication and presentation skills.
“Last year one of the real benefits we heard about from the finalists was the opportunity to meet likeminded people at a similar stage in their career. We want to take this further by facilitating a two day training programme for all winners where they will not only be able to further their professional knowledge but they’ll be able to form a network of people in similar positions,” said Chris Edwards.
On the same day as the networking event, Wednesday 19 June at Safety and Health Expo, an awards presentation will take place and the winners will be announced. They will be presented with a trophy and will be celebrated in an article on SHP.
Abdallah Alzghoul – Health and Safety Engineer, Consolidated Contractor Company (Pictured above top left).
Abdallah has worked on the revision of procedures, which reduced the firm’s utilities damages from one a week to one in four months. He also developed a wellbeing initiative for over 3,000 workers, which has cultural benefits for workers from 11 different countries.
Elliott Andrews – Operations Manager, Savills
Eliott recently started three monthly formal welfare meetings to discuss a wide variety of topics, involving employees directly and ensuring he personally oversees works that are higher risk. He developed an open-door policy towards the discussion of site hazards and created a defect/hazard book that any staff member or future contractor can look at.
Chad Bott – HSE Manager, Transcentral
Chad has personally invested £12,000 in himself and used his holiday time in order to train for his NEBOSH Diploma and NEBOSH General Certificate. He now teaches all staff in the work place First Aid, Fire Safety, Manual Handling and Health and Safety to a level 2/3 standard accredited courses, all of which sit outside of his daily job role.
Rachel Butler – Group HSS&Q, DeTrafford (Pictured above, bottom row, second from the left)
Since starting in the construction industry 10 years ago, Rachel has been influential in making changes to the fast-paced industry and is a positive ambassador for health and safety. She is an ambassador for Safety4Good and aims to positively influence H&S culture by donating her time to great causes. She was recently a panellist on a webinar on what the future holds for health & safety and has since assisted several people working towards the next step in their career.
Daniel Christou – Health and Safety Advisor, Grangewood
Daniel’s personal/one-to-one approach has seen the company’s culture mature at an exponential rate and engagement on site is at an all-time high. He provides on-site toolbox talks for up to 40 operatives – providing a personal approach that has been commended by larger clients. He has also developed a veteran’s programme where future Army veterans are given a work-experience package where they would shadow the health & safety department so as to aid in their transition into civilian life from the Armed Forces.
Ruairi Coffey – Health Safety and Wellbeing Adviser, Danny Sullivan Group
Clearly emotionally connected to health & wellbeing, Ruairi has made some major changes to wellbeing initiatives. He created the company’s DSG Mental Health Champions and ensured that DSG was the first labour supply company to obtain the Be Fair accreditation. He has personally supported members of the team when they have found themselves under strain mentally. He goes on self-funded training courses and recently completed training to become a Mental Health First -Aider.
Toby Cook – Health, Safety & Wellbeing Trainee, Lanes Group (Pictured above, bottom right)
Aged just 19 and new to health & safety, Toby has immersed himself fearlessly but intelligently in his role, showing maturity and imagination to make a major impact. In doing so, he has shown initiative, innovation and determination which has contributed to the health, safety and wellbeing of colleagues. A keen cyclist, he has used his risk assessment and safety training to advise his cycling club’s coaches on carrying out dynamic risk assessments of activities undertaken by the youngest members, aged six to 17. He has also been asked to advise on the safety of competitive cycle courses for young riders.
Aoife Devaney – Assistant Health and Safety Advisor, St George Plc
As a young woman working in a male dominated environment, Aoife has engaged in the community and works hard outside of her day job to encourage a career in safety within schools. She has found a path for herself which enables her to be taken seriously and make a difference. She is helping to reshaping the diversity of the profession. An active member of the Women in Health and Safety Network, she recently hosted a networking event to champion careers in construction.
Marc Doherty – HSE Technician, Mars Food UK
Marc has led a project at the Mars Food UK site in Kings Lynn to reduce the workplace transport risk both inside and outside of the factory. He has been really innovative in finding solutions that complement work flow, while at the same time keeping associates safe. He was nominated for and made the Mars Food UK final of Make The Difference Awards, a scheme that recognises outstanding contribution, behaviours and leadership within Mars.
Brett Edkins – Health & Safety Manager, Grangewood
Brett orchestrated a complete redevelopment of two companies.
He completed his health & safety diploma within eight weeks in 2017 and inherited a health & safety which had seen an accident and subsequent prosecution.
His work and subsequent buy-in form people allowed for a swift turnaround which accrued into a prestigious RoSPA Gold Award.
He has also assisted in developing a veteran’s programme.
Ellis Fenwick – Health and Safety Coordinator, AECOM
Ellis has been responsible for developing and implementing several innovative solutions which reinforce and underpin AECOM’s ‘Safeguarding’ values. Concerned about colleague fatigue and work-induced stress, specifically in respect to split-shift working imposed by traditional Ecology survey working patterns, she began to collate and analyse data associated with surveyor work and rest periods and produced an annotated report detailing her findings which has resulted in a significant step-change in the scheduling of surveyor shifts.
Molly Gill – Trainee Health & Safety Officer, Leeds City College (Pictured above, top right)
Molly developed the idea of having a dedicated point of contact in wellbeing issues for LGBTQ+ staff members. After attended the companies EDI working group and speaking to staff there, Molly realised that there were barriers in place for LGBTQ+ staff that the current way of working did not address and is creating a positive dialogue by using training by agencies and sign posting staff to the correct places.
Josh Hutchinson – EHS Analyist, Afton Chemical
One of the areas of focus for Josh over the year has been to look at the company’s inspection systems. The objective was to take ownership of the systems, ensuring completions to the expected standards. Josh extensively engaged with the local safety representatives and develop the whole inspection system to take it to a whole new level.
Elizabeth Joseph – Assistant Designated Person Ashore, Shell Int. Trading & Shipping Co.
Elizabeth identified various gaps in Emergency Response (ER) and undertook extensive research and analyses from different industries, visited ER centres and collaborated and exchanged ideas. She then developed new ER exercise scenarios, conducted monthly exercises, managed the ER rota and rewrote the Site’s Oil Spill Pollution Response procedure. She laid-down an impactful final emergency response protocol. As the co-founder of Shell’s H&S Young Professional’s network, which has a global outreach, she works to develop the skills of young professionals by providing a platform for discussion and learning from leaders.
Robert Jukes – HSE Manager, Wax Lyrical
Robert has demonstrated tremendous potential with a positive energetic can-do approach and has spent over £10,000 self-funding courses to improve his knowledge of the industry. Always willing to help others progress Robert has mentored others looking for a start in the industry and is currently assisting local charities and sports clubs with their health and safety responsibilities. Robert has challenged industry best practice to further improve confined space access, lifting procedures, well-being and implemented a colour coded Risk Assessment and quiz to improve performance.
Micheal Kaggwa – Safety And Environment Coordinator, Hima Cement (Uganda) (Pictured above, top row, second from right).
Michael has introduced the use of visual aids as a way of communicating health and Safety information. He has recently translated key information into the local dialect to ensure all workers get to grasp the principles of safety at work, by engaging English-speaking workers to translate safety information to the closest and precise meaning possible.
Brad Lydiate – Technical Director, Eighty20 Risk Systems
Brad was awarded the North West Construction Safety Group Award for Innovation for 2019 after completely revolutionisin the site audit and Inspection medium. He did this by making the process live and interactive from the point of works to the creation of the dashboard required an application format to ease the access to the system by the operatives in the field.
Cynthia Maua – Environment Health & Safety Officer, PTC seconded to Kenya Breweries Ltd
Cynthia has transformed EHS at the utilities and facilities departments. She reviewed the OSH practices in line with best practice standards and local legislation and identified gaps which she championed to ensure closure on the shop floor as well as documentation of learnings. Cynthia is currently working on partnering with the community to raise awareness of health and safety among school going children and care givers.
Carl Morgan – Health and Safety Advisor, EDF
Carl represents EDF as the main point of contact for Health and Safety advice for nuclear islands 1&2. Overseeing the work of the largest contractor on the project Carl deals with complex technical and interface management issues. Carl is developing a technology with leading temporary works experts to utilise smart technology in the tracking of temporary works structures and inspection regimes on a live electronic register.
Kannan Natarajan – Corporate Safety Advisor, M. Al-Barghash Company
Kannan has created YouTube channel especially for HSE topics, The Safety Show, which has over 5,000 subscribers. Those are all safety professionals around the world. He has improved cooperation between the project and HSE team to ensure 100% Safety
Gregory Orih – Drilling Operations & HSSE Engineer, KCA Deutag
Gregory has self-taught and become proficient in the use of Power BI software in analysis of both HSE and operational integrity issues.
He has pulled together a number of reports that reflect the groups HSE and operational status at the click of a button.
Daniel Shaw – Health and Safety Advisor, Taylor Woodrow
Dan’s enthusiasm and passion to make a difference and improve people’s mental health has been instrumental at shaping the company’s approach to wellbeing. Dan has been an ambassador for the wellbeing group in addition to his normal duties as a H&S Adviser on a number of very busy projects. As well as Taylor Woodrow, he has taken it upon himself to a role-model in raising awareness of wellbeing across the whole of VINCI Construction UK, often in his own time.
Paul Young – HSE Advisor/Technical Support, Shell (Pictured above, bottom left)
Paul is a dedicated HSE professional who is determined to improve the health and safety of everyone. He has provided numerous development opportunities to individuals on site including safety representatives, behavioural safety coaches, and the wider workforce. He uses creative techniques to allow people to learn and challenges the conventional approaches used previously at site.
Congratulations and good luck to all of the finalists. The winners will be announced in the Networking Forum at Safety & Health Expo on Wednesday 19 June.
In 2018 we celebrated the achievements of three outstanding winners. You can read more about last year’s winners and their achievements here.
Rising Star UK winner 2018: Jyssica Murphy, Health & Safety Advisor at housing group Torus.
Rising Star International winner 2018: Sanjay Rajasekaran, Group Safety & Health Manager at Tata Sons Ltd in India.
Biggest Impact winner 2018: Tina McGennity, Projects Division HSE Manager at JCA Engineering.
Safety & Health Expo takes place at London’s ExCeL from 18-20 June. To secure your free ticket, click here.
I would like to apply for Health Safety award
Mathew, you can enter here: http://shponline.ubm-events.com/2019-SP-Rising-Star-Award
I would like to apply for 2019
Health Safety award
just for clarity before I nominate an associate, is the age bracket 30 & under?
That’s corrrect Greg, yes.
Is there a Fading Stars award for old fogies like me who have worked tirelessly in Health and Safety for 30 years+? 🙂