South Australia's 2009 Safe Work Awards

Announcing the winners of the South Australia's 2009 Safe Work Awards on 30 October, Industrial Relations Minister Paul Caica congratulated the winners of the Best Public Event for Safety award, the organisers of Big Day Out - El Dorado Music - for achieving high standards of safety with such a massive logistical effort: “The judges were impressed by El Dorado’s genuine desire and efforts to create a strong safety culture for the event for the workers, volunteers, service providers and contractors and for the thousands of patrons.

A record number of 64 nominations were made for this year’s Safe Work awards; Minister Caica stating this was a clear sign of the growing priority being given in SA to safer workplaces: “South Australia’s Strategic Plan target in this area is to reduce the incidence of workplace harm by 40% over the ten years to 2012. In line with this, the state government is pleased to provide the Safe Work Awards - a statewide competition for safety performance, with benchmarking being a very important means of evaluating an organisation and improving performance.

The other 2009 Safe Work award winners were:

• Best Workplace Health and Safety Practices in Small Business - PG Enterprises;
• Best Solution to an Identified Workplace Health and Safety Issue - Fosters Coonawarra Vineyard - Canopy reconstruction;
• Employer of the Year - Private sector: DHL Supply Chain;
• Employer of the Year - Public sector: Adelaide Shores;
• Best Workplace Health and Safety Management System - GHD Australia;
• Best Individual Contributions to Workplace Health and Safety:
  • An employee who does not have OHS as part of their duty: Nicola Featherstone;
  • Health and Safety Representative of the Year: Katria Powell;
  • Outstanding contribution by a person with OHS as part of their duty: Glyn Williams.
• Augusta Zadow Scholarships:
  • Vicki Hutchinson and Belinda Purvis - Repatriation General Hospital; and
  • Kathy Grieve - Catholic Safety Health and Welfare SA.

The winners of the main categories in South Australia’s Safe Work Awards will now go through as finalists in the national Safe Work Australia Awards being held next year.