Thursday, November 08, 2007
At a special awards ceremony in London John Laing’s Adrian Ewer unveiled his inaugural Chief Executive’s Awards, recognising nine outstanding projects that demonstrate the important contributions staff have made to CSR achievements across the business over the last year.
Jonathon Porritt, Programme Director of Forum for the Future and Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, and Adrian Ewer presented the overall Special Chief Executive’s Award to a team working across four John Laing projects in London: Newham and Enfield schools, Newham University Hospital, Canning Town housing and the North London train line.This team of seven has built relationships between the project companies and the local community to deliver demonstrable benefits aiding education, disadvantaged young people, community regeneration and homelessness within the Newham area. A charity chosen by this group will receive £10,000 and a team member will take one week paid leave to work on a charitable project of their choice.
Commenting on their achievements Adrian Ewer highlighted the breadth of their activity, including work with the London Wildlife Trust to set up wildlife clubs and develop wildlife areas in schools, bringing training schemes into schools in conjunction with leading environmental organisation Waste Watch and supporting charity Roma at a local school to welcome new comers to the country.
Ewer also praised the group’s work with Elevate, a charity that helps young people tackle social exclusion, where they secured funding from John Laing’s charitable trust to pay for a youth worker at the company’s Canning Town housing project. And through John Laing’s social housing JV Regenter, where they are working with the East London Business Alliance, contributing towards a working group for Canning Town, to better understand the community needs in terms of education, employment and crime reduction.
Adrian Ewer in his citation said: “This is a phenomenal effort from a group that are breaking down barriers and creating partnerships that were previously non-existent. Their work is truly inspirational and they are keen to establish a framework from their efforts so that similar schemes can be adopted throughout the John Laing Group.”
The members of the group are Alice Canty, Gaynor Barritt, Emma White, Sylvia Kavanagh, Anna Ricci and Kate Pix.
In addition to the Special Award a further eight Chief Executive Awards were presented by Adrian Ewer and Jonathon Porritt to employee-led projects working within John Laing’s core workstreams of Natural Environment, Supply Chain, Communications, Waste, Materials, Human capital, Water and Energy, and Community. Each winner will nominate a charity of their choice to receive a donation of £1,000. All prizes were awarded by the John Laing Charitable Trust.
ENDS
For further information please contact:
The Madano Partnership: 020 7593 4000, or
Christine Jones, Group Communications Manager at John Laing plc. 020 7901 3200
Notes to Editors:
John Laing plc is a specialist provider of facilities in the PFI and PPP markets with a long-term perspective and approach. The company manages and delivers 59 projects from planning and funding through to design, construction and operation. It is actively involved in the management of a wide range of rail, roads, education, health, police, defence and special purpose government facilities www.laing.com.
The John Laing Charitable Trust exists to enable John Laing plc and its subsidiaries to make charitable donations and provide welfare support to existing and former employees. The work of the Trust is split into four distinct areas, including: welfare, charitable donations, staff applications and named funds.