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 is predicated 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 presently company EHS head for Larsen & Toubro (L&T Heavy Civil) in India.
Stephen is a kind of on the frontline. His private aim is to drive up requirements throughout the board in a rustic the place security 
tradition shouldn’t be as mature as say Europe or the US. In his work with L&T, he’s accountable for the security and wellbeing of hundreds of workers 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 explicit challenges. Greater than 22 official languages are spoken within the nation, and it additionally has a transient workforce which poses an issue for these attempting to ascertain good OS&H apply and creating safer working environments. Nonetheless, Larsen & Toubro have labored onerous to beat these obstacles and use the RoSPA Well being & Security Awards to exhibit 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 very cellular and seasonal and this produces a big, fast turnover of labour, which comes primarily from the agricultural sector.
“Staff typically have little or no expertise or understanding of advanced building and engineering work strategies, and the proper security behaviors that require implementation to allow accident prevention.
“Making that change and creating these talent units in a small window of time – earlier than the workforce leaves the initiatives 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 attempting to implement and develop a security tradition, not solely by his day-to-day work on the bottom however by making a agency dedication to workers and by in search of methods to additional develop his affect and promote finest security apply.
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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 workers, contractors, suppliers, JV companions, and shoppers. With theme’s 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 workers collaborating in digital actuality building security coaching, it’s clear that Stephen has his finger on the heart beat of all the newest developments and applied sciences in security.
“We additionally centered on third-party coaching from worldwide our bodies in crane administration, operation 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 awards ambassador.
“It’s an honor to be approached to assist such a prestigious world model in security,” Stephen says. “In accepting the position as ambassador it offers me a possibility to present one thing again to the occupational security and well being trade and assist RoSPA in its general imaginative and prescient, mission and beliefs.”
Stephen intends to encourage extra organizations in India, by his networks, to enter the RoSPA Well being & Security Awards and assimilate the entry course of into their security methods, as Larsen & Toubro has completed.
“Having the alternatives as I do to be invited to speak on numerous boards, at conferences in India and Asia extra extensively, and to authorities and trade boards, I can converse to them of the worth a company can achieve from merely getting into the awards course of and understanding how they will enhance and finally be acknowledged as RoSPA winners.”
If you’re fascinated with changing into a part of the RoSPA Awards, go to www.rospa.com/awards and discover out extra about our internationally acknowledged award scheme.