NRW donate $40,000 to charities in the name of safety
Leading resources contractor NRW has donated $40,000 on behalf of its winning ‘Projects of the Quarter’ sites to the Royal Flying Doctor Service (Port Hedland), Child Australia (South Hedland) and the Cancer Council WA.
NRW’s HSE Recognition Program was launched in February 2012 with an Australia wide roll out across all NRW projects.
The Program is a quarterly assessment of NRW’s project teams’ safety performance across all sites in its civil and mining business units.
Not only do the traditional measures of safety – for example recordable injury rates – come into play, but almost as importantly is each site’s demonstrated attitude to safety through continual improvement and engagement of its workforce.
Commencing with the inaugural April awards, every quarter two NRW project sites (one civil and one mining) will win the now coveted “NRW Project of the Quarter”, recognising that site and its workforce’s commitment to safety.
What makes the NRW Program unique is that the Program is not just about internal recognition and benchmarking, it empowers NRW employees to make a worthy and valuable contribution to organisations in the community via its charitable component.
NRW’s Health, Safety, Environment and Training (HSE&T) general manager Jim McCristal said that at the beginning of each quarter, every site has an open discussion amongst its workforce to decide the charity or community not-for-profit organisation they would like to support that quarter.
“At the end of the quarter, the winning team donates $20,000 to its nominated organisation,” he said.
“Not only are we able to empower our employees to nominate and support causes close to their hearts, we are able to give something back to the communities in which we operate – it’s been inspiring to see.”
The inaugural winners of NRW’s Project of the Quarter awards are as follows:
Project of the Quarter – Civil
Project: Anderson Point Port Earthworks Client: Fortescue Metals Group Beneficiaries: Child Australia ($10,000) and Royal Flying Doctors’ Service ($10,000)
Project of the Quarter – Mining
Project: Christmas Creek Mining Client: Fortescue Metals Group Beneficiary: Cancer Council ($20,000)
NRW’s Anderson Point Port Expansion project manager, Simon Cook said that as a team we decided it was important to select a cause from the local community and we struggled to narrow it down to just one.
“Our first organisation is Child Australia, which does a fantastic job and the work they do benefits children both locally and nationally,” he said.
“Secondly as FIFO workers, we often work in very remote locations and value and appreciate the hard work the Royal Flying Doctors Service offers. We’re proud to be able to donate $10,000 to each of these worthy organisations.”
The project manager at NRW’s Christmas Creek mining operations, Lincoln Butler said the site chose their charity based on an overwhelming number of nominations they received from all operators.
“Many of our operators and staff have been personally affected by cancer and the opportunity to offer support to an organisation that encourages research into a disease which impacts so many of us, was very important,” he said.
Fortescue’s General Manager Christmas Creek Mine, Tony Swiericzuk was keen to recognise NRW’s positive attitude to safety.
“NRW’s project teams consistently demonstrate a positive and enthusiastic commitment to safety, and I personally am very proud to see the two winning Projects of the Quarter’s for NRW are both on Fortescue Projects,” he said.
“We pride ourselves on setting high safety standards and delivering above expectations at all times. It’s a fantastic achievement for both projects – well done!”
The award and cheque presentation ceremonies will occur in the coming weeks with representatives from each organisation travelling to the project locations.
