NEWS
Members vote for winners of inaugural PSS awards
News |Published: Jul 4, 2024
PSS members and guests attending the annual conference spent the afternoon session hearing presentations from the finalists of the three new PSS Members Awards. Many congratulations to the winners: Port of Dover, Shoreham Port, and The Bristol Port Company with Weston College. Thank you to TT Club for sponsoring the awards.
The Port of Dover took home the trophy for the Best Skills Initiative for their project to host T level students for the work placement segments of their course. The presentation won both the hearts and minds of the audience as Marisa George, Dover’s learning and development partner, talked through what T Levels are and why all ports should get involved in them, before handing the floor to T Level student, Levi Lamar, who gave an impressive first-time presentation on his experience of the programme.
Only slightly behind Dover in the voting, PSS board member and CEO at the Port of Blyth, Martin Lawlor, spoke about the port’s new Energy Central Campus. The state-of-the-art campus boasts specialist electrical and mechanical workshops classrooms, digital skills facilities, an immersive Clean Energy & Maritime Visitor Centre, and events space for up to 250 people.
The third placed finalist was Hutchinson Ports for their project to introduce individual mentoring and coaching to make a step change in safety understanding and taking action.
The award for Best Safety Moment went to Shoreham Port for their dunnage placement tool which proved that being innovative isn’t just about modern technology. Following an idea scribbled on a page by operations manager Tom Rawlins, the port designed and built a unique tool to remove the risks of working from height when placing dunnage on wood stacks. The team brought the prototypes along to show the development of the tool, and then port operative Martin West gave a demonstration of it in use, with operations director Nicky Brown playing the role of the wood stack.
In joint second place were Forth Ports for their project to change the safety culture at their Grangemouth site and the Port of Milford Haven for their new safety video.
The Collaboration Award voting had attendees on the edge of their seats as the voting went to the wire: split between The Bristol Port Company and Weston College, and Portsmouth International Port and Associated British Ports.
The Bristol Port Company and Weston College finally won out following their joint work to modernise their aging port induction process. Working with students from Weston College, the induction process now includes an interactive video featuring a range of characters including “Steve Dore”.
The lively presentation from Chris Hatter from Portsmouth and Saheed Onisemo from ABP was pushed into second place. Their joint initiative used the PSS Managing Safely in Ports course to overcome historic commercial and sporting rivalry to share best practice and knowledge.
In third place was RMS and Precision Stevedores for their collaboration to train and support workers across both organisations.
The full entries and presentations from the finalist will be on the PSS website in the following weeks. All the entries are being showcased day by day on the website.
