The air of safety and quality

With an employee recently being honoured at the recent Noshcon awards, Air Products South Africa once again held its much-anticipated annual Safety and Quality Awards – an event which serves to reinforce the company’s view that, “for each and every employee, safety and quality should be a way of life”.

Josua le Roux, general manager, central services at Air Products says: “The Safety and Quality Awards are our way of giving recognition to those who go the extra mile and who demonstrate an exemplary passion for the business and its values.”

The winner of the Dexter Baker individual award was Christo van der Mescht, commended for his dedication to mentoring and developing employees, while the Dexter Baker team award went to the management accounts team of Peter Cameron, Michael Ras, Kobus Bester and Jason Williams on the basis of their commitment to improving their service to the business units.

Other awards included the Near Miss safety award, which went to Carel Adams, who reported the most “near misses”, thereby helping to ensure that these at-risk situations do not re-occur.

The Cape Town branch received the Chairman’s Shield safety award for its ongoing commitment to improving the overall environment, health and safety at the facility, while the Vanderbijlpark branch won the Leonard Parker Poole award, based on the NOSA audit year-on-year improvement.

Air Products also recognises achievements in customer service with the Internal and External Geoff Prevett customer service awards. The Internal award for 2013 went to the management accounts team, while the Port Elizabeth Facility team received the External award.

The MD`s Special Awards recognise both individual employees and teams who show an ongoing commitment to quality. Kaushik Tailor, in recognition of his demonstrated commitment to key MIS projects, and Mike du Toit, for his leadership role in numerous maintenance improvement projects – took the individual awards.

The MD`s Special Awards for team work went to the Specialty Gas/CryoEase sales team, the Air Separation Unit 2012 maintenance shut down team, the Receivables team, and the Packaged Gases Contingency Plan team.

“The commitment to best practice principles in safety and quality, as demonstrated by all the winners this year, will serve as an inspiration to the rest of the company in our quest for ever higher standards. But ultimately it is our customers who are the real winners, as they are the recipients of reliable, dedicated service and stringent safety and quality procedures,” Mike Hellyar, managing director of Air Products, concludes.