Erne Stations leading the way

Power Generation Excellence in Health and Safety Awards

The management and staff at Erne Stations say that, "Excellence in Health and Safety is only possible through hard work, dedication and continuous improvements. We hope that this award will spur us on to further improvements so that Erne stations will excel in health & safety for many years to come. Our target will always be zero accidents."

The first Presentation Ceremony for the newly established Power Generation Excellence in Health and Safety Awards was held in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal on Thursday 7th June last.

The day started with a meeting of the Power Generation Safety Committee at Cathaleen's Fall Generating Station where representatives of all the awardwinning stations were in attendance. The events concluded with a tour of Cathaleen's Fall and Cliff Generating Stations on the Friday morning.

At a prize giving ceremony in Ballyshannon that evening, Power Generation's Executive Director Pat O'Doherty congratulated Erne Stations, the overall Award Winner, and the three Merit Award Winners – Aghada, Lough Ree Power and Marina while complimenting all the participants on the very high quality of their entries.

Pat told the audience that he believed that the new awards would become a central element of the Power Generation Annual Safety Calendar, adding; "Our challenge is to keep safety as our first priority, throughout the organisation. We need to be innovative in health and safety promotion and these new awards are a good example of the ways in which we can continue to engage staff in practical and interesting safety initiatives."

The Power Generation Executive Director also used the occasion to stress that everyone in the business has a personal responsibility to ensure that Power Generation is a safe place to work.

"If anyone encounters or witnesses unsafe working they should take action to ensure that it is stopped immediately, it is in all our hands to ensure that we achieve our target of sustaining an incident free working in all our locations" he said. "A rigorous judging process including location auditing and document and performance reviews."

The new Excellence in Health and Safety Awards were developed by a sub-group of the Power Generation Committee. Replacing the older Safety Awards, the Excellence Awards have more rigorous assessment criteria, including location auditing, as well as document and performance reviews.

ESB Worker Board Member, and Chairman of the Board Subcommittee on Health and Safety, Tony Merriman, made the presentation to overall winners Erne Stations, and in his address he congratulated the organisers and the winners. "These new Awards have been a success for everyone involved, at a time when it is more important than ever that we focus on safe working and taking personal responsibility for workplace safety, for ourselves and our colleagues", he said.

As the overall winners of the inaugural Awards, Erne Stations are the first holders of a new Excellence in Health and Safety Trophy, designed by silversmith Seamus Gill. Accepting the award on behalf of Erne Stations, Harry Doherty said that the staff were very proud of their achievement and that the process of entering and participating in the competition had contributed both to team sprit and safety awareness and had been a very valuable experience.

A presentation was also made to Wally Wallace to mark the end of his 21-year involvement with Safety Committees in ESB. He served firstly as Secretary of the Chief Executive's Safety Committee 'C' and then as Secretary of the Power Generation Safety Committee. Wally, due to retire later his year, has been a central figure in ensuing that the Committee acts effectively in promoting Health and Safety initiatives across the business.

Now that the new Awards have been launched, the feedback from the participants has been incorporated and the proposed changes for next year have been endorsed by the Power Generation Safety Committee, the next task for the Safety Committee subgroup is to prepare and circulate the briefing note and application process for the 2007 Awards, which look likely to be very hotly contested throughout ESB Power Generation.