With the Take Care Award, we make special safety achievements and examples of good safety behaviour visible and reward them. The first Take Care Award was presented to Arjan Dorlas, drilling superintendent at Van Leeuwen BV, for coming up with a creative way to keep his colleagues out of the line of fire.

At the Amaliahaven project, steel plates are suspended after anchors are installed. ‘That went wrong once,’ says Arjan. 'We work with a crane with which we hoist the plate up on a magnet and then guide it by hand. The plate fell off the magnet and landed on a colleague's leg. Fortunately, it ended reasonably well this time, but it could have been much worse.'

A simple solution with big impact

To prevent this from happening again, Arjan came up with a creative solution. 'We mounted a magnet on a stick two metres long, with a hinge in between. That way you can use that stick to guide the anchor plate and you don't have to stand so close to it yourself.' This solution has since been embraced by other colleagues as well. According to Arjan, it is a simple solution that is easy to apply, which is why others like to use it too. In conclusion, Arjan says: ‘Always take a good look around before you start anything. Stay alert and make sure that automatism doesn't creep in, making you stop looking around properly.'

Cheque of € 500

Every quarter, the Take Care Award jury (consisting of Geert van der Linde, HSE director, and members of the Works Council's HSE committee) chooses a winner from all nominations from the previous quarter. The Take Care Award is thus presented four times a year. For the winning nomination, €500 is made available to arrange a tasty treat together with the (project) team or department involved, to donate to charity or to do something fun.

Arjan would like to donate the prize to the Diabetes Fund. 'Together with my colleagues, I thought about this. Someone in my family is affected by this, so I like to support this charity. Eating good food and having a beer with colleagues is always possible, but this is where my heart really goes out.'

An honour and a pleasure

The members of the OR - HSE committee say that it is an honour and a pleasure to be able to contribute, together with Geert van der Linde, to the continuous improvement of safety within Ballast Nedam. Judging and helping to decide on the rewarding of all good ideas and safety initiatives in the form of the Take Care Award is an important and fun part of this. It is special to see how people at different places and levels within Ballast Nedam are working on safety. Whether it's personal safety or safety for an entire project.

The Works Council - HSE Committee hopes that by rewarding safe behaviour, all employees working at or for Ballast Nedam will become even more aware of how important safety is for themselves and others. And that thinking along on this is highly appreciated.