Scaffolding contractor Xervon Palmers has won a prestigious gold award and the coveted Construction Award for Safety at the annual AstraZeneca awards – and has negotiated a contract extension for scaffolding and access work at the pharmaceutical giant’s Avlon site, near Bristol.
The firm, which has supplied scaffolding services to some of the most prestigious sites in the country, including the Forth Bridge and St Paul’s Cathedral, has been providing scaffolding and access solutions at AstraZeneca’s production facility in the region for over three decades, and will continue to do so for at least another two years.
The contracted work has led to Xervon Palmers being recognised for its “contribution to Safety, Health and Environmental (SHE) improvements throughout 2012”. The gold award was presented to the firm’s Tony Collier and the scaffolding and access team at Avlon in recognition of their services.
A spokesman from the Xervon Palmers team at Avlon said: “I believe the key to our successful long-term partnership with AstraZeneca is the fact we share the same goals – we work closely with them exchanging innovations, which in turn helps both companies achieve a high Key Performance Indicator success rate. I also believe you don’t maintain a long-term contract with a worldwide market leader without being a team player, like we are.”
The main function of the Avlon plant is the production of some of AstraZeneca’s leading drugs, such as those used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The site employs around 250 people, and Xervon Palmers provides a variety of access products there.
There was more good news for the scaffolding firm when it heard it had maintained its accreditation with Safecontractor, the leading third-party safety accreditation scheme, in recognition of its commitment to achieving “extremely high standards” in health & safety management in recent and ongoing scaffolding and access contracts.
Xervon Palmers has been a member of the Safecontractor scheme since 2009. It is the fastest-growing health & safety accreditation scheme in the UK, with more than 200 major clients and over 18,000 contractor members.
A spokesman for Xervon Palmers said: “Safecontractor accreditation not only enhances our ability to attract new contracts and comply with pre-qualification requirements, but also helps demonstrate our ongoing commitment to health & safety.”
The firm has also recently passed an external ISO9001 quality audit for its work on the iconic, multi-million-pound London Bridge Station scaffolding project. Ian McFarlane, director for business and project development, said: “We were able to demonstrate effective implementation and maintenance/improvement of the management system within the London Bridge Station Project scope. It is a real credit to the team at London Bridge Station that no ‘Non-Conformances’ were raised during the audit.”
