EFFC President Serge Borel announced the winners of the first EFFC European Safety awards. There were two categories – “Best safety tools and technical innovations” and “Best innovative H&S campaign, H&S leadership program or training initiative”. We received twenty entries across both categories that brought together the best in innovation across the Members contractor community.

The winners were:

Best safety tools and technical innovations

Gold Award winner – Auger Stem Cleaner – Bachy Soletanche UK

Silver Award winner –  C-Site – HBM KFT

Bronze Award Winner – iGuard – Bachy Soletanche UK

Best innovative H&S campaign, H&S leadership program or training initiative

Gold Award Winner – Step forward for safety – Keller UK

Silver Award Winner – Safety Always – Trevi spa Italy

Bronze Award Winner – Reflexes – Soletanche Bachy

Serge Borel presented the awards to David de Souza Neto of Keller UK and Martin Stanley of Bachy Soletanche UK.

Serge Borel presents European Safety Award for Best Company Innovation to David de Souza Neto

David de Souza Neto of Keller UK gave a presentation on Step forward for Safety and explained how Keller had partnered with ATT – a specialist safety agency – to create a program that had senior leaders run day sessions of 10 or so people. The leader would speak about a difficult time they had experienced as a result of an accident before showing a film that showed the build up to a service strike incident leading to a serious injury. Actors involved in the film would then come into the room to respond to questions in a series of exercises. This involved training people in how to have difficult discussions with seniors when things had gone wrong.

Martin Stanley of Bachy Soletanche UK gave a presentation on the Auger Stem Cleaner. This tool is a quick hitch attachment to an excavator that en

Serge Borel presents European Safety Award for Best Site Innovation to Martin Stanley

ables a pressurised hose to be used to clean blockages out of a CFA auger. This allows this operation to be carried out without any site operatives needing to be close to the auger when there is a potentially high-pressure release of concrete or aggregate from the auger. Bachy are happy to share their designs without cost, or manufacture it for anyone who would like to adopt this on their sites. Please contact effc@effc.org in the first instance if you want to find out more.

Simon Jones (right) presents Bronze European Health & Safety Award to Rob Gold.

Rob Gold of Bachy Soletanche UK also presented on their iGuard system. This piece of RFID technology links a rig operator’s card with the ignition system of the rig so that only the approved operator can start and operate the machine. This also records the working hours of the operator on the rig in order to build up a digital record of the experience they have on specific machinery. It is an important part of how Bachy in the UK manage access to the rig. It also provides insight into how long the rig is idling or in active use – this is increasingly important where Bachy are trying to reduce the amount emissions on site from fuel use.

The winning entries shall be invited to participate in an EFFC webinar to share their initiative so that other contractors may learn from it or look to implement their own versions of the systems or programs. The intention is also to extend this to the other entries to the awards over time so that there is a good store of safety innovations contractors can refer to.