Leaders in Safety Award 2023 winner – Vladimirs Kameko

We are pleased to announce that Vladimirs Kameko has won the Vroon Leaders in Safety (LiS) Award 2023. Over 20 nominations were received, coming from both the Deepsea and Offshore fleets. They were all excellent examples of 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.

Our 2023 winner currently serves as Daughter Craft Coxswain/Able Seaman on board our Aberdeen-based Multi Role & Emergency Response and Rescue Vessel VOS Valiant. He joined us in 2015 and has been a member of VOS Valiant’s regular crew since 2018.

Vladimirs was nominated by his Master, Captain Bartek Mazurek, and the whole team on board. In their opinion, he deserves this title for his exemplary work ethic and conduct, and his very proactive attitude towards safety and his colleagues on board. This is exactly the behaviour that our LiS programme promotes. Well done, Vladimirs. You are an example to us all.

In the words of his colleagues, “Vladimirs is dedicated to preserving safety during work hours. He is often the first to notice and point out any dangers associated with the jobs being done. He has found a perfectly balanced way to inform and protect his fellow crew, while retaining a friendly atmosphere. In our opinion, this is a crucial aspect of his personality. It can be very easy to point out flaws or mistakes in other people’s work and quickly lose the on-board friendliness. We want to emphasise how important a role he plays in our current crew. He looks out for his fellow crew members, while remaining vigilant to spot any shortcomings AND he is respectful and friendly when doing so. Those are three tasks that not everybody is able to perform simultaneously. We find these traits of Vlad to be exemplary and thus nominate him as our 2023 Safety Champion!

“Vlad is highly regarded by the teams on board (engine & deck), and considered a knowledgeable and positive person. He is also very proactive during drills, providing valuable comments and facilitating better understanding of the procedures we follow. During daughter-craft (DC) operations, he is encouraging and generates confidence in his boatmen, briefing them extensively before practice/work. His fellow crew in the DC comment that he is a very good and safe operator of the craft. While working at close standby or during other operations with the DC, the boatmen can always rely on him for excellent support and knowledge.”

As you can read, Vladimirs is clearly another worthy winner of our annual Leaders in Safety Award.

At a suitable opportunity, AB Kameko will be presented with a commemorative plate. In addition, he will receive USD 2,500, with an additional USD 2,500 being donated to the charity of his choice, Children with Cancer.

Many congratulations, Vladimirs! 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 Vroon’s “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.