NISO President Mr. Harry Galvin presents Weltec Engineering with the All Ireland Gold Award at our Waterford Head Office.
Weltec Engineering Ltd. was honored this year at the 2021 NISO Awards by being awarded the Gold Award along with an Exceptional High Achiever Award. This result follows other successful years where Weltec attained Bronze Awards (2016 & 2020), the President’s Award for large sized organization (2017 & 2019) along with numerous other awards over the last ten years.
NISO President Mr. Harry Galvin, was good enough to travel to our Waterford head office to present the plaque to Weltec’s EHS Director, James Hackett.
The Weltec Engineering team has clearly demonstrated their ongoing commitment to developing their Health & Safety systems, improving the Health & Wellbeing resources for all who work for us and to striving for Safety excellence at all levels within the organization. Receiving the Gold Award recognizes all the hard work that has been carried out and the dedication that is given to continual improvement. This growth and development is key to maintaining the success that Weltec engineering experiences and to ensuring a happy, healthy and productive workforce. Weltec looks forward to many more years of partnering with NISO and participating in the annual occupational health & safety awards.
As we all know the workplace is an ever-changing landscape that requires constant attention and review to ensure that our colleagues are provided with a safe work environment. In order to ensure that Weltec management are kept up to speed with issues that arise the company operates as Safety Observation Reporting system that all employees are encouraged to partake in. The actionable items raised in Safety Observation Reports are posted on each site and tracked on a “You Said/We Did” board that is visible to all employees. This process ensures employees that Weltec Management are listening to their concerns and are addressing them. COVID-19 is another challenge that we were faced with in 2020 and we had to be innovative to ensure that we could operate our worksites safely. As part of this process Weltec tried to reduce physical interactions wherever possible by introducing QR Code COVID-19 questionnaires
and Close Contact tracing logs. Guidance documents such as Restricted Movement/Isolation period charts and information on what actions to take for various scenarios were developed and issued to all appropriate personnel. This was often done by utilizing a web text system which ensured that we could communicate effectively will all Weltec employees and address their concerns and questions.
Over the past two years Weltec have also put a number of new initiatives in place to protect our valuable workforce included but not limited to the following, Powered Air Purifying Respirators for all welding activities, a standardized permitting system to ensure consistency across all sites, upgraded first aid equipment on all sites, revision of EHS documentation to a format that is more easily understood, introduction of auditing software to simplify the process and provide Safety Officers with more time to be physically present on site and the use of software that allows the digital signing of documents. Over the next year Weltec will also introduce a new web-based safety management system that will incorporate all elements of site based EHS management along with a Learning management system that will allow the company to provide online training to all employees relating to our policies, procedures and systems. New experiences and exciting times lie ahead for Weltec Engineering.
James Hackett, Environmental, Health & Safety Director, Weltec Engineering Ltd
