In 2018, RoSPA developed the RoSPA Awards Ambassador scheme, aiming to create a community of people who champion RoSPA’s goal to drive up well being and security requirements by way of the RoSPA’s Worldwide Well being and Security Awards. With greater than 27-years of expertise in OS&H administration, and over half of these spent working abroad, Stephen Storey, who relies in India, was nicely positioned to be RoSPA’s first worldwide awards ambassador. We meet up with him to see what this implies for him.
Stephen Story has spent fifteen years working abroad in OS&H administration within the Center East and Asia. He’s at the moment company EHS head for Larsen & Toubro (L&T Heavy Civil) in India.
Stephen is a kind of on the frontline. His private objective is to drive up requirements throughout the board in a rustic the place security 
tradition just isn’t as mature as say Europe or the US. In his work with L&T, he’s in command of the protection and wellbeing of hundreds of staff and contractors working in high-risk environments in heavy infrastructure sectors comparable to tunnels, rail, roads, bridges, nuclear, hydropower, protection, ports and harbors .
The Indian well being and security scene presents its personal specific challenges. Greater than 22 official languages are spoken within the nation, and it additionally has a transient workforce which poses an issue for these making an attempt to instil good OS&H observe and create a safer working atmosphere. Nonetheless, Larsen & Toubro have labored arduous to beat these obstacles and use the RoSPA Well being & Security Awards to display an enormous dedication to well being and security with constant entries into these worldwide awards for nearly 20 years, with over 100 entries throughout Larsen & Toubro in 2019.
“The workforce is extremely cellular and seasonal and this produces a big, fast turnover of labour, which comes primarily from the agricultural sector.
“Employees usually have little or no expertise or understanding of complicated building and engineering work strategies, and the proper security behaviors that require implementation to allow accident prevention.
“Making that change and growing these ability units in a small window of time – earlier than the workforce leaves the tasks to take up jobs exterior the development trade of their native area – is an enormous problem.”
So how is Stephen tackling these points?
He’s trying to implement and develop a security tradition, not solely via his day-to-day work on the bottom however via making a agency dedication to staff and by searching for methods to additional increase his affect and promote finest security practices.
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hen recurrently works with the Nationwide Security Council of India and the Worldwide Labor Group, amongst others, and each January Larsen & Toubro maintain a security month which reaches hundreds of stakeholders together with staff, contractors, suppliers, JV companions, and shoppers. With themes comparable to ’embrace digital for a safer office’, which included putting in security apps, together with security inspection and near-miss apps on smartphones used within the office, and staff collaborating in digital actuality building security coaching, it’s clear that Stephen has his finger on the heart beat of all the most recent developments and applied sciences in security.
“We additionally centered on third-party coaching from worldwide our bodies in crane administration, operations and rigging, and scaffolding inspection and erection, and ran occupational well being campaigns on coronary heart assaults, strokes, diabetes and yoga health.”
In 2018, Stephen was chosen to be RoSPA’s very first worldwide ambassador award.
“It’s an honor to be approached to help such a prestigious international model in security,” Stephen says. “In accepting the position as ambassador it offers me a chance to present one thing again to the occupational security and well being trade and help RoSPA in its general imaginative and prescient, mission and beliefs.”
Stephen intends to encourage extra organizations in India, via his networks, to enter the RoSPA Well being & Security Awards and assimilate the entry course of into their security methods, as Larsen & Toubro has executed.
“Having the alternatives as I do to be invited to speak on varied boards, at conferences in India and Asia extra extensively, and to authorities and trade boards, I can converse to them of the values a company can achieve from merely coming into the awards course of and understanding how they’ll enhance and ultimately be acknowledged as RoSPA winners.”
If you’re fascinated by changing into a part of the RoSPA Awards, go to www.rospa.com/awards and discover out extra about our internationally acknowledged award scheme.