Leaders in Safety Award 2022 winner
AB Paulo Masangkay Solarte selected as winner of 2022 Safety Award
We are pleased to announce that AB Paulo Masangkay Solarte has won the Vroon Leaders in Safety (LiS) Award 2022. Over 60 nominations were received, with the Vroon Group Managing Board selecting the winner from a shortlist of five. The nominations, which came from both the Deepsea and Offshore fleets, were examples of excellent, timely intervention and/or decisive safety leadership throughout the Company. They are evidence of the importance and continuing success of our Leaders in Safety programme.
This year’s winner currently serves on board high-heat tanker Iver Ability. While on deck watch when his vessel was discharging Molten Sulphur, all seemed to be going well until AB Solarte noticed an unusual sound (cracking noise) on the cargo hose. Without hesitation or delay, he hit the emergency button. Later it was discovered that the terminal crew had closed the valve by mistake, thereby directly opposing the discharge pressure. Further investigation revealed that the cargo hoses had sustained internal damage, meaning that, with his split-second action, Paulo prevented possibly worse consequences. The charterers also praised his actions and our Company’s safety mindset! He is clearly another worthy winner of our annual Leaders in Safety Award.
Paulo joined us as Messman in 2007, sailing on product tanker Great Eastern, being promoted to OS in 2009 and AB in 2011. During more than 15 years with the Company, he has served on 14 different product and high-heat tankers.
At a suitable opportunity, Paulo will be presented with a commemorative plate. In addition, he will receive USD 2,500, with an additional USD 2,500 being donated to a charity of his choice.
Many congratulations, Paulo! We thank you for your contributions to ensuring a safe working place on board at all times, at sea and in port. Our appreciation also goes to his colleagues, who took the time to recognise his contributions and nominate him for this Award.
About the “Leaders in Safety – Programme”
Every accident is one too many. At Vroon we truly believe that if we work together it is possible to create an incident-free working environment, where we all return home safe and healthy after duty, to the ones we care for most.
We strive to make our vessels and workplaces safe places to be. This, in an industry that is inherently dangerous and where we are surrounded by hazards on a day-to-day basis. After any incident, we investigate what happened and what we should do to prevent a future reoccurrence.
We believe that by learning collectively we can prevent all significant incidents. In order to continue our journey towards a safer working place, we must apply safe ways of working and actively target behaviour. Our work in this area is never finished, as we must constantly improve our safety performance. As our environment changes, we need to adapt and change our awareness. We motivate each and every person to contribute towards the growth of a culture where working safely is a constant; working unsafely is simply unacceptable!
At Vroon, we believe in this long-term cultural change process and we expect all, management and employees alike, to fully support this process. Our LiS programme has been successfully running since 2013. Through active participation and improved safety awareness, we are seeing that incidents can be prevented. The QHSE statistics confirm that our LiS programme really does bring results, with a significant reduction in incidents over recent years.