Mackoy's October Operative Award Winners

October came and went in a flash, and with the next phase getting underway for The Highwood Group at North Stoneham Park in Eastleigh, as well as a few new contract wins secured (more to come on those soon) it's no wonder we're now in December and wondering where on earth did November go?

As usual our operatives have been doing a fantastic job keeping build times on track on our clients' sites, and delivering that quality Mackoy workmanship we pride ourselves on. Which leads us perfectly into our Site of the Month and Site Manager Award winners for October. Our Site Awards are a monthly initiative we first introduced back in April of this year, and they're just one of the ways we like to reward those star members of our groundworks team who go above and beyond for our clients each month.

One such person who's consecutively demonstrated that Mackoy dedication and commitment is Shane Wheeler, our Site Manager for our build with Redrow in Bracknell. Shane, as you may remember, was the previous winner of our Site Manager of The Month Award, back in September, but his performance throughout October was so impressive yet again, we felt it only fair that Shane should win for October too. So, for the first time since we introduced our Site Awards we have a double back-to-back winner.

The decision to award Shane the £500 prize was strongly supported by our SHEQ Manager David Bacon, whose job is to inspect progress and adherence to health, safety & quality on each of our worksites. David was once again blown away by the high scores Shane achieved during October's site visit, which amounted to an outstanding 101 points in total, for both his safety and quality controls on site. Keeping scores as consistently high for two months straight, as Shane has, demonstrates a Site Manager who is putting in 100% commitment. So, although we've broken from convention in awarding Shane our Site Manager of The Month Award two months in a row, it's a well deserved win, that just goes to show hard work is rewarded in our team.

As to October's Site of The Month winner, well, that was a very close call to make this month, with so many sites developing to schedule and great feedback coming in across the board from our clients. Eventually, by a hair's breadth, we decided to crown Ferndown, our build taking place with developer Bellway, as the October winner.

Collecting the award on behalf of the site is Graham Curtis, our Ferndown Site Manager for Mackoy, and Mike Beare, our Contracts Manager on the project. The two have been in place at Ferndown since works got underway, and their collective hard work so far also resulted in the site winning July Site of The Month this summer too. On that occasion Bellway had praised our team's professionalism and the rate of progress on site in a face-to-face meeting with our Mackoy leadership team, following a period of night works that took place at the outset of the project. On this occasion, the decision to award Site of The Month to Ferndown again was similarly off the back of positive feedback we received from Bellway, thanking our team for their continued commitment and top quality workmanship on the build.

It's client comments like this that really make our job worthwhile and fill our Mackoy leadership team with pride. We're meticulous about only hiring the very best talent to our groundworks team, so it's always great when a client who's contracted our services recognises the value our operatives bring to a build.

Mike and Graham, £250 each is coming your way as thanks for all your continued hard work in helping our Ferndown contract take shape. Bellway are happy clients and we couldn't be more proud to have the two of you, along with Shane, our Site Manager of The Month winner, as part of our Mackoy groundworks team.

Speaking of quality within our team brings us nicely onto one of our other monthly initiatives, our Mackoy Quality Photo Competition. Regular followers of our Mackoy news and social feeds will be familiar with this in-house photography competition, which we started earlier this year. It was set-up to celebrate and share the fantastic work our groundworks operatives undertake every day on our clients' sites, by encouraging operatives to capture and send in pictures of their work at different stages of completion.

Since we announced the award we've had a flood of entries month on month - which has made our job as judges a tough business. For this reason there've been many occasions when we've bent the rules and awarded the £100 per photo prize to more than one winner, but in October, one man alone took the glory, and that's our Mackoy Site Manager Nick Finn. Nick sent us in a great photograph of excavation works taking place as the sun sets on site, a very artistic shot, and one that our whole team felt made Nick October's worthy Quality Photo Competition Winner. So congratulations Nick, the £100 prize this month is yours.

We'll be back with an update on our November Quality Photo Competition and Site Award winners before the year is out, but to every operative on our groundworks gangs, keep up the good work, and keep sending in your images to quality@mackoy.co.uk. We've made amazing strides on a number of high-value groundworks contracts in 2018, and with 2019 now well and truly on the horizon, let's continue to push through and end the year on a high.

Categories: Photo of the Month , Site of the Month