VGC’s senior directors have announced the shortlist for the 2022 Go Beyond awards.
Chief Operating Officer, Ciara Pryce said:
“We are delighted to announce the shortlist for the 2022 Go Beyond awards awarded to those that live and breathe the VGC values every day and have delivered exceptional results. Following over 130 nominations, we have reviewed all entrants and are pleased to reveal the 2022 shortlist. We are immensely proud of all those that have been nominated. Judging to select the winners for each category will be incredibly hard.”
Winners will be announced on Thursday 15 December 2022 at our end of year team meeting and awards ceremony.
| We achieve potential: head office | |
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| Ryan Rees | Ryan Rees was promoted to HSQE manager for the midlands region this year. During this time he has made a huge impact on both his regional team and our clients. He has been nominated by several people including internal colleagues and clients. He has provided valuable input on safety stand down days and supported client audits for collaboration on projects. A client said ‘Ryan’s manner, knowledge and relationships with the operational team, safety team and workforce is exemplary – it is evident that Ryan played a big part in the positive safety culture’ |
Nirvana Murray
| Nirvana was promoted to the role of Compliance manager for the Labour Solutions team this year, in recognition of the impact she has had in maintaining and promoting high standards within the recruitment and onboarding side of the business. She is a self-confessed non-technical person but has focused herself on self-improvement this year undertaking various courses including Power BI, the winning mindset and excel. She has helped prepare and represent her team at various audits including both client and internal audits, and stepped up to present to the HMRC on the processes VGC have in place to ensure compliance with tax legislation. She is a go to person when people have concerns. Following modern slavery training many colleagues reported concerns to her about some activities. Nirvana fully investigated the matter, took relevant advice and ensures that both the candidate and company were not at risk. Her colleagues have said that Nirvana is the go to person when they have either professional or personal queries and that as well as providing excellent support she also has them in fits of laughter! |
Krista Edwards
| Krista has been on a journey of professional development and improvement over the last few years. Initially joining VGC projects as a project administrator she has challenged the team to provide more opportunity and responsibility within her role and is now an Assistant Quantity Surveyor. During the year Krista completed her Apprenticeship programme in Construction Quantity Surveying at London South Bank University gaining a HNC qualification with incredibly high scoring. She has now enrolled on a Level 4 apprenticeship at Westminster University to complete her BSC in quantity Surveying and Commercial Management. She has quickly picked up knowledge and has a huge thirst for learning, keeping the projects she’s responsible for on their toes and managing the commercials. Krista has proven to be a real asset to both the VGC Projects commercial team and the VGC group. |
Natalia Lagos
| Natalia has had an incredible year achieving a distinction in her level 3 apprenticeship in business administration and also being shortlisted for the construction news apprentice of the year. This was achieved through hard work, diligence and a passion for self-development. Natalia has been an integral part of the HS2 SCS delivery team providing an elevated level of management support whilst her line manager was on maternity leave. She has driven herself to achieve exceptional results, has a very good vacancy fill rate and has an excellent outlook when working with people. |
| We achieve potenital: site staff | |
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| Paulo Lapa & Joao Prates | Paulo and Joao were nominated by our client Kier for work that they delivered on Mogden sewage works projects. They were recognised for a high standard of work. They both go above and beyond to deliver to a high standard including the revitalisation of the war memorial on site where they put in new posts, sprayed the chain, remade the crosses, placed the new silhouette, and cleaned and tidied the whole area. Well done for delivering to the highest standards! |
| Josh Furner | Josh was working on a project for Kier as part of the highways team and was nominated by a client from Arcadis. The client commended him for getting the work completed to a high standard ahead of the commonwealth games. He said, “your planning and delivering the proposed works to hight stands of safety and keeping all stake holders informed is commendable. My sincere thanks to you and your team for the timely completion of works to a very challenging timescale’.” |
Lee Keegans
| Lee is a Senior QS for Morgan Sindall working on the Welsh Water framework through VGC Personnel. His line manager requested to nominate him as he has become an integral part of the commercial team covering multiple different sites on the framework as a Senior Quantity Surveyor. He works extremely hard and should be recognised for his impact. |
| We deliver on our promises: Head office | |
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| Christina Donaghey | Christina joined the team in March 2022 and has made a significant impact with her colleagues across the business. She has supported hugely with award submissions and taken full control of all marketing and PR activities for the group. She has also provided extensive support to the CSR team with schools engagement and work experience programmes. Her enthusiasm is infectious and the quality of her work is incredibly high. |
| Jana Romanova / Vemizelou | Jana is labour manager for the SCS project on HS2. Jana has been nominated due to her approachable and collaborative relationships with people. She has established an excellent team at HS2 and leads the labour desk who are outperforming against their KPIs which is even more impressive as they have continued to deliver whilst she has been on maternity leave for part of this year. The project has also been very successful from a financial point of view due to the strict controls that she has put in place. |
| William Donnelly | William Donnelly is a senior QS for VGC projects. He has been nominated due to his unwavering commitment to ensure projects are delivered to the highest level. He has an outstanding work ethic and you can rely on him for everything. He doesn’t allow challenging or stressful situations to get him down and maintains a humour that lifts everyone’s spirits. |
| Diane Searle | Diane is training coordinator and is referred to as an ‘unsung hero’. She works away quietly arranging training and assessments for over 1500 workers ensuring that their competencies remain valid at all times. She is flexible, approachable and very good at her job even when some of the training requests come in at the last minute or for incredibly remote locations! |
| Kayleigh Boxley | Kayleigh Boxley is a recruiting machine! As labour Manager for EKFB on HS2 she has delivered a 50% increase in some of the most challenging geographies to recruit in. She has built fantastic relationships with works managers and foreman on the sites ensuring that she 100% understands their labour requirements and sets high standards for everyone to follow! |
| Bobby Hayre | Bobby Hayre is a site agent working for VGC Projects. During a Balfour Beatty project Bobby saw that a local business owner was experiencing significant frustrations and disruption to his business due to the impact of the planned works. Bobby spoke calmly with the owner and listened to his concerns. He was able to agree a work plan that minimised the disruption to the local business owner and diffused the situation. This was outside Bobby’s responsibilities, but the team were grateful for his calm and assuring approach to the problem. |
| Ryan Bridgwater | Ryan is a resourcing and compliance specialist within our Power and process team, soon to be changed to VGC Energy. Ryan’s relentless approach to resourcing has been commended by 2 clients, Lodge Cottrell and F Brazil. He has supported resourcing for a couple of lastminute breakdowns where he has ensures that the roles were covered which was key in ensuring that our client won further contracts and long term work. |
| We deliver on our promises: site staff | |
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| Alec Richards | Alec Richards is the civils package manager for Siemens through VGC Personnel. Our client has commended him for his excellent zero harm behaviours in challenging the civils design on a project. It is these sorts of behaviours that ensure that projects build to the highest standards and that the safety of our people are kept at the focus of all activities. |
| Hampstead Fibre Team | The Hampstead Fibre Team from VGC Projects were commended for the high quality of works that they continue to deliver. During a site visit our client was incredible impressed by the quality of works, the safe diffing works and risk assessments in place and the site tidiness. This is a high profile project for VGC in a challenging location and it is essential that the highest standards are upheld at all times. |
| Steven Wright | Steven Wright works as a General Foreman on SCS for HS2. He has been nominated for suggesting improvements to the way in which work is delivered. He identified that there were vehicle access and movement concerns and suggested that the bellmouth into oak farm could be widened to allow better access to vehicle movements. We encourage all our staff to recommend improvements to how things are done. |
| We look after each other: Head office | |
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| Amy Wells | Amy is a resourcing and compliance specialist in the midlands team. Following on from some training on modern slavery awareness, Amy identified some suspicious activity. As a direct result of the training she had the confidence and knowledge about how to escalate the matter for further internal investigation. Thankfully there was a legitimate explanation to the issue but Amy’s actions demonstrated that she was focused on ensuring that everyone that works for us is looked after well. |
| Anna Bieda | Anna has recently been promoted to a senior resourcing and compliance specialist in the midlands region. She has demonstrated that she really supports her team by ‘filling in’ for a colleague whilst he had to manage some personal matters for 2 months, as well as completing her own job. Her actions meant that we continued to grow the site team to 500 people during this period. She has also been key in training and developing new and existing members of the team ensuring a uniform and consistent approach to our activities |
| Anna Slavova | Anna has recently been promoted to a senior resourcing and compliance specialist in the southern region. Anna has been driving her team to constantly achieve the best results whilst maintaining high levels of uniformity and compliance throughout her team. Anna delivers daily in all her work duties and is 110% committed to her individual role and the team success. There is never an issue helping anyone. She is flourishing and is one of the key members of the team. |
| James Burke | Recently promoted to delivery manager for the midlands region, James has been nominated for how brilliantly he has grown and supported a new team in the region. Through investing in his own personal development his team say he has improved his management skills and supported them individually – especially those who had very little recruitment experience when they started. As a result the whole team is fully focused on excellent recruitment and onboarding of VGC workers and ensuring our clients receive a top class service. The success is seen in how closely the team work together and the excellent performance being delivered every week. |
| Nicki Mason | Nicki is the general manager at Cole Hire, our vehicle rental business. Nicki has been nominated due to her exemplary service to Cole Hire and looking after her staff to the best of her abilities. She is a great listener and helps resolve issues inside and outside work. She was personally nominated by a member of our team for noticing when they weren’t quite seeming themselves. She paused what she was doing to have a chat with them to make sure they were okay, and she continued to check on this person on a regular basis. She is a great colleague as well as a mental health first aider. Nicki also upholds the highest levels of service for both our internal and external customers making sure whe always goes the extra mile to ensure excellent results. |
| Chris O‘Sullivan | Chris O’Sullivan is delivery manager for the south of England, including HS2 and rail works. Chris has an incredible attention to detail and ensuring that a job is always delivered 100% correctly. As a result, his team will achieve 140% of their budget this year. He also takes a personal interest in ensuring that our social value commitments are delivered ensuring that we provide access to jobs for new entrants to the sector and we provide lots of development opportunities through NVQs and apprenticeships. Under Chris’s leadership, his team have been complimented for their excellent achievements in this area. |
| We look after each other: site staff | |
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| Luke Waddy | Luke Waddy was awarded a medal at the Highways Heroes awards. His award is for a very sensitive issue for which we cannot divulge too much information about, but in summary, he provided support to a very vulnerable member of the public who had gained access to the site. His support ensured that they ended up in a safe place with a level of secondary and professional support. |
| Opeyemi Osiyemmi | Opeyemi is a resourcing and compliance coordinator whose responsibility span offices and sites on rail projects in the south east. Following strikes with a train company he recognised that a colleague would struggle with fatigue management due to lack of public transport available. He offered to collect his colleague at the end of the shift to ensure that he didn’t suffer the adverse effects of fatigue and remained safe. |
| Karen Coles | Karen works on the M42 project for Skanska. She identified that some scaffolding had been left by the corner of a compound office and was creating a potential trip hazard. Having concern for the safety of herself and her colleagues she spoke with the works manager who ensured that the scaffolding was segregated prior to being improved. We encourage all our staff to be aware of their surroundings and make sure that the work environment is safe for all. |
Outstanding achievement
This award is for the member of staff who has consistently demonstrated all the VGC values throughout the year.
All the winners will be announced at our six-monthly meeting on Thursday 15 December.
