- January 25, 2024
- keece
Keece take out NECA HSEQ Award
Recently several of the Victorian team attended the NECA Awards at Melbournes Crowns Palladium, and received the industry’s premier award for Health & Safety Excellence.
The NECA Awards stand as the pinnacle of recognition within the electrical and communications sector, representing one of Australia’s most esteemed awards programs in this industry. These prestigious accolades honor exceptional accomplishments on a national scale. They serve as a platform to acknowledge outstanding achievements across the field.
Keece Group has heavily invested in developing its in-house paperless HSEQ platform. When commencing this project, we assessed many platforms. Subsequently, we decided to develop and adopt an in-house platform embedded within the Microsoft Teams ecosphere.
Microsoft Teams provides Keece’s employees with front-end access via phone or PC, granting them immediate access to health and safety procedures, checklists, forms, and policies necessary to carry out their work. Many of these processes and tools are subsequently disseminated throughout the organization using other Microsoft toolsets.
In presenting the NECA HSEQ Award special mention was made of two other elements of the Keece HSEQ system.
When presenting the award, the judges specifically mentioned two other elements of the Keece HSEQ system and focus:
1. Keece’s focus on Apprentice safety, training and supervision practices.
2. “No Blame Reporting” culture; where all team members are encouraged to record every incident, no matter the severity allowing the business to assess and continually improve in safety, training, and process.
While the technology, accessibility, and transparency of their system were key factors in winning the award, everyone across the organization recognized them. The adoption and ongoing championing of a safety culture throughout the organization were seen as a huge benefit.
In his acceptance speech, the GM of Keece; Gerard Lyons, thanked #NECAVIC for the Award, and praised the entire Keece team for their dedication and commitment to providing a safer work environment for all Keece employees.
One system to rule them all
The Keece team has faced considerable complexity in developing the platform due to operating throughout all Australian states and New Zealand. Keece management strategically decided to implement the highest and most stringent legal requirements as the basis of their platform. Varied legislation and both procedural and operational requirements have contributed to this decision. This strategic decision has enabled the implementation of many innovative practices across all locations while adhering to legislation in any one jurisdiction; for example, Silica dust protocols.
Their “no blame reporting” culture has enabled the business to leverage learnings from literally every incident / near miss throughout their 100+ workforce, to improve process, training and safety for all.