ABB CEO Safety Awards recognize excellence in HSE

ABB’s ongoing drive to the improve health and safety of its 135,000 employees worldwide marked an important milestone in 2015 with the announcement of the winners and runners-up of the first CEO Safety Awards.

Launched in 2014, the CEO Safety Award is open to all ABB employees around the world, and acknowledges significant individual or team achievements that promote a strong safety culture, that identify, prevent or correct safety-related issues, and/or support the global 'Don’t Look the Other Way' health and safety culture change.

More than 150 award nominations were received in three categories: Safety Leader, Project Safety Performance, and Team Safety Improvement.

The awards were presented at the Group Leadership Forum, in Zurich in March 2015, by CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer and Chief Human Resources Officer Jean-Christophe Deslarzes, who said “The CEO Safety Awards honor extraordinary colleagues who go the extra mile. The objective is to recognize outstanding individual and collective performance.”

Winner of the Safety Leader award for 2014 was Catherine King, Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Manager at ABB in Australia, for demonstrating exceptional HSE leadership in the workplace.

“Catherine is an outstanding safety leader whose mantra is employee participation, active leadership, recognition and engagement, which she translates into creative, highly innovative campaigns that involve our people at all levels,” observed Axel Kuhr, ABB’s Managing Director in Australia.

On collecting her award, Catherine spoke on behalf of all the winners, saying: “It’s an incredible honor to receive this award, and a firm career highlight.” She highlighted the ongoing need to change behaviors to improve safety, noting that “safety is a culture, not a job,” and thanked the colleagues who had helped the award winners: “Behind every successful manager there is always a successful team driving achievement.”

Winner of the Project Safety Performance award for 2014 was Mohammed Ragab, ABB Project Manager in Qatar, representing the ABB team which oversaw the Al-Rayyan Village (Qatar) substation project. In mid-December 2014 the Al-Rayyan project surpassed 4.5 million person-hours of work (ABB employees and subcontractors) without a single lost-time incident. That makes Al-Rayyan one of the safest workplaces in the history of projects in Qatar, thanks to rigorously executed safe working practices that include regular OHSE training sessions, site monitoring, and active encouragement of all employees to report unsafe acts and non-compliance. ABB worked closely and regularly with subcontractors to identify and address safety concerns on site.

Winner of the Team Safety Improvement award was ABB Shanghai Motors Co. Ltd., (CNMOT) for major progress in HSE workplace improvement and implementation. CNMOT is a joint venture established in Shanghai, China, in 1995 to design, make and sell three-phase asynchronous motors. In 2014, CNMOT increased output and revenue while simultaneously making significant progress in safety performance, including zero lost-time incidents for 1,457 consecutive days and an ongoing annual drop in medical treatment incidents.

The injury accident rate decreased from 1.7 percent in 2010 to 0.3 percent in 2014. The results reflect the efforts of all 767 employees to own and implement HSE improvements, from upper management to shop floor staff.