16 November, 2015

Canterbury social housing recovery work wins another accolade

Housing New Zealand’s Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Programme (CERP) has continued to win industry awards for its efforts in repairing and rebuilding earthquake-damaged homes in the region.

Fresh from winning the Excellence in Social Housing award at the Australasian Housing Institute (AHI) Awards in Perth, the CERP team in charge of its Canterbury recovery and rebuild work has collected more success – this time for its HomeSafe programme.

HomeSafe encourages safety “conversations’’ on worksites to not only prevent health and safety issues but to encourage and support open discussion, identification of issues and to reinforce positive behaviours.

Its HomeSafe entry was competing in the Safety Leadership Award category at the 2015 Site Safe Construction Health and Safety Awards in Auckland last week.

The entry was presented with a “Judges Special Mention’’ award – only the second time in the award’s five-year history a special award of this type has been given.

The Judges remarked: “It is fantastic to see this category extending beyond traditional construction companies. Housing NZ has done a great job with this initiative by focusing and reinforcing positive safety behaviours, we look forward to seeing this programme rolled out nationwide.’’

The Safety Leadership Award category was for a site or company where an initiative has been implemented that involves organisational leaders in developing safety culture, making safety positive, encouraging engagement in health and safety and demonstrating leadership at the highest level.

Housing New Zealand was the only Government organisation in the finals.

HomeSafe aims to continually raise awareness of health and safety on worksites and help foster this culture. The programme has been running for more than a year and has resulted in more than 1400 safety conversations on Housing New Zealand work sites across Christchurch.

This represents an estimated 3000 staff and contractors discussing positive safety.

CERP General Manager Andrew Booker was thrilled with the award which capped off a successful month with national and international awards events recognising the work it has done as part of the overall Canterbury recovery.

At the recent Australasian Housing Institute (AHI) national awards in Wellington, it won top awards for the CERP work and its partnership with the Department of Corrections to restore quake damaged houses at Rolleston Prison.

Days later, at the Australasian AHI Awards in Perth, CERP won the overall Excellence in Social Housing award while its work in repairing damaged houses at Rolleston Prison, in partnership with the Department of Corrections received a highly commended award in the Leading Asset Management category.

Mr Booker says the awards were great recognition for the work that Housing New Zealand staff, management and contractors have put into the massive programme that will see up to 5000 damaged houses repaired and up to 700 new homes built across greater Christchurch.

ENDS

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