Presentation of Leaders in Safety Award 2024

In November, we announced that our Leaders in Safety (LiS) Award for 2024 would go to three worthy winners, Aleksandrs Berezins, Alexander Gordon and Christopher McCarthy. We received many nominations from our Deepsea and Offshore fleets, but the joint actions of these three colleagues made them our unanimous choice as winners.

Crew members on VOS Tracker, Cook Aleksandrs, AB/Advanced Medical Aider Alexander and Third Engineer Christopher responded immediately to an emergency situation on board, working together to save the life of one of their colleagues. You will have read the full story of how their prompt response and team work made them worthy winners of our annual Leaders in Safety Award in the latest News Express magazine and on our website.

Earlier this month, a delegation from our VOS Aberdeen office and VOS Tracker’s client went on board to thank and congratulate Aleksandrs and Alexander. Both gentlemen received a commemorative plate and a prize of USD 2,500, plus a cheque for USD 2,500, made out to the charities of their choice. For Aleksandrs, the selected charity was the local Aberdeen Seafarers Centre, while Alexander chose the Scottish-based Lucky2BHere charity.

Christopher McCarthy, who has since left our employment, will receive his commemorative plate in the coming days.

Many congratulations to all three seafarers. We thank you for your decisive actions, safety skills and professionalism, vital qualities in ensuring a safe working place on board at all times, at sea and in port.

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 colleagues, 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.