We have been recognised for our commitment to sustainability with a coveted Bronze award at the International Green Apple Awards for the Built Environment and Architectural Heritage 2016. This is the second time in 3 years we have received this recognition.
Lining up against some much larger companies, including Kier Construction, Carillion/Morgan Sindall JV and Skanska, the prestigious title was awarded for, “clearly demonstrating a drive towards sustainable development.”
The judges also singled out our management for demonstrating incredible foresight by “choosing to invest and diversify the business during the recession while starting to feel the pinch, resulting in strong financial results during the past six years.”
This enabled us to invest in key areas of the business, including training and apprentices, providing young people with a career path in construction and upskilling current employees by providing them with 3.78 training days on average; and £4.4m in plant and equipment, to push environmental and efficiency savings across projects.
Other areas where we were commended, include our continual investment in management systems audited and validated to ISO14001, ISO9001, OHSAS18001 and Achilles BuildingConfidence (5-star rating) accreditation, which ensures we deliver high standards of quality and compliance in health and safety and the environment.
We achieved this while improving their environmental performance with such measures as:
- Going paperless and greening our fleet.
- Sponsoring a wealth of community support initiatives, including: ILEAP, Warwickshire Road Safety, British Blind for Sport, and The Alzheimer’s Society.
- Investing £220k in GPS technology and developing an earthworks modelling team that prevented 75,000m3 of material from going to landfill.
Peter O’Brien, Managing Director at O’Brien Contractors, said: “This award highlights the benefits we bring to the region and our customers by implementing best practices benchmarked against environmental, quality and health and safety performance. We are thrilled our commitment to sustainable development has been recognised with an award.”