An ABB team in the UK has won a top safety certificate awarded by the country’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) for the rigorous standards applied in 2008 on a project for ExxonMobil.
The ABB / ExxonMobil Demolition and Remediation project team received confirmation in 2009 that they have been awarded a RoSPA Gold for 2008,
and as such this is the second year running that the team have received the award. This is a fantastic achievement by the project team who, through their ongoing attention and commitment to delivering safety excellence, are classed by ExxonMobil as delivering best practise and setting the standard for others to aspire to. The team has been working since 2003 on demolishing 550 petrol stations in the UK and Ireland, and clearing the sites of any environmentally harmful material.
It won a health and safety Merit award from RoSPA in 2004 and Silver awards in the following two years, before achieving Gold in 2007. “The RoSPA Gold award is recognition for all involved in the project for their continued hard work and commitment in helping achieve an excellent safety performance working in the potentially hazardous environment of demolition and land remediation.” said Steve Andrews, leader of the project team. ABB regards occupational health and safety as a top priority and aims to eliminate work-related incidents in which employees are hurt.
Steve Andrews, ABB receiving the RoSPA Gold Award from RoSPA Vice President Lord Brougham & Vaux.
The criteria for the RoSPA Gold award include that no fatalities or major injuries occurred on a project. In the project ABB has overall responsibility for decommissioning selected ExxonMobil petrol stations. These are predominantly in city centres, where reducing petrol retail margins and rising land prices have made the sale of land financially attractive. To enable the land to be sold, it needs to be remediated to eliminate any environmental issues.
This builds on the excellent feedback from Judith Hackitt (Chair of the Health and Safety Executive) who visited another Demolition and Remediation project managed by ABB. “The approach I saw being taken by ABB to dealing with health and safety issues in demolition and remediation was impressive,” said Hackitt to an audience of ABB, ExxonMobil and contractor employees. “Not only was the site a first class example of safe demolition, it was also clear that the work was being done more efficiently because of the way it had been organised."