Workers’ well-being paramount at Tarmac

Company wins raft of accolades at MPA & British Precast Health & Safety Awards

TARMAC have won a raft of awards and commendations for outstanding achievements in building safe working environments for their employees, customers, and the communities which they serve at the MPA & British Precast Health & Safety Awards.

The company won the ‘Safer Through Improvements in Health & Well-being’ award for creating an occupational health and well-being learning centre at the company’s National Skills and Safety Park in Nottinghamshire.

This was followed by the ‘Safer Together’ award for Tarmac’s Professional Operator Development Programme (PODP).

Underpinning this year’s MPA Awards – which acknowledge outstanding safety practice across the minerals industry over the past 12 months – was the theme ‘Safer by Sharing…Safer by Action’.

The awards also focused on the ‘Fatal 6’, which, as the name suggests, covers the six most critical hazards facing producers throughout the minerals industry.

Carl Platt, chairman of the MPA Health & Safety Committee, said: ‘We want to mitigate these high-consequence hazards as an industry, as companies, and as an association. My key objective is to promote Vision Zero and I want us to work together to make our industry desirable, safe, and world class.’

Andy Shuttlewood, Tarmac’s health, safety, environment and quality director, said: ‘We are delighted to be recognized by the Mineral Products Association and British Precast for our measures to ensure the safety and well-being of everyone on site and in the community.

‘Our people are our most important asset, and, because of this, we go to great lengths to ensure a very hands-on approach to learning. The space we created at The Park brings alive the awareness of the occupational hazards that our people will encounter while working on our sites.’

Heather Ankers, Tarmac’s PODP training manager, added: ‘The PODP course encompasses all of the knowledge and behaviours needed to become a skilled operative within our business. We look at the technical and practical aspects of the role blended with classroom-based learning that they can take back to their own sites.

‘It’s not just showing them how to do something, but also why they do it and getting them to think about making safe and better decisions.

‘Since launching the PODP in 2018, we have enrolled around 150 apprentices on the programme. So far, 70 of those have completed with around 40 of them gaining distinctions, which means they have achieved 100% on their end-point assessment.’

Tarmac won further commendations for a Vehicle and Pedestrian Management Project (VPMP) at their Newark Building Products plant. The business also received a further two certificates of merit in the Safer Production category – for a remote-control material hopper feed and for the company’s system for maintaining and operating safety-related controls.

In addition, Oliver Kibble, a shift supervisor at Whitwell Quarry, was runner-up in the Young Leader category.