The Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) held a luncheon for more than 300 of Bapco and its contractors' employees to mark the company's environmental, health and safety (EHS) achievements for last year.

This annual gathering at Bapco Club in Awali is an important event in the Bapco calendar during which EHS performance is reviewed, and awards are presented to the company's departments and contractors who excelled in EHS performance and practices, reported the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication.

Chief executive Dr Peter Bartlett commended Bapco not only for its outstanding EHS performance but also for the role it plays in promoting EHS in Bahrain and the region.

Dr Bartlett also congratulated the winning Bapco departments and contractors for creating a safe workplace and protecting the environment.

The chief executive linked EHS with productivity and noted that "...outstanding EHS performance breeds outstanding business performance".

"If you are good at EHS, you are good at what you do and vice versa," he said, and stressed the role Bapco leadership team, employees and contractors play to attain an outstanding EHS performance.

"Leadership support and commitment, and employees' and contractors' active participation, are the basic ingredients of an outstanding EHS culture and hence performance. We have this recipe at Bapco," said Dr Bartlett.

Part of the annual luncheon and awards presentation is a detailed overview of 2014 performance and future challenges which was delivered by Bapco acting deputy chief executive and acting chairman of Bapco environment, health and safety committee Khalid Al Sabbagh.

He said that in outlining last year's EHS performance "we have demonstrated in the second half of 2014 that we are able to achieve excellent EHS performance, and we were able to set records like eight million employee-hours worked without a lost time injury by the end of the year, which went hand in hand with our outstanding reliability performance when we achieved 374 days without a reset of our reliability clock.

"A more reliable facility is a safer one, which we were able to demonstrate last year. But we will not rest on our laurels and we are determined to excel even more in our EHS performance in 2015 and the years to come."

He congratulated the winning departments of Plant Maintenance Department for Category 1, Technical Services Department for Category 2, Comsip for Large Contractor and Ma'ameeri Contracting for Small Contractor.

The shareholder awards, which are an initiative of Energy Minister Dr Abdulhussain Mirza, went to Ahmed Zayed (shops inspector, Reliability Engineering Department, Bapco), Salah M Taqi (superintendent, special assignment, Bapco), Samah Al Hamad (OEMS leader, Quality Assurance Department, Bapco), Ali Juma (senior safety engineer, Comsip), and Seree Hari (safety manager, Cape).

The winners were identified for supporting EHS initiatives and adding value, transferring good practices to others (individuals, groups, and companies) and innovative management of EHS issues.

The winners received their awards and recognition from Bapco's chief executive. – TradeArabia News Service