Taunton’s Somerset County Cricket ground was the venue for the Hinkley Point C Excellence Awards 2019, on Wednesday, November 23. The G4S Security team was recognised for their service to the EDF Energy nuclear power station under construction – the largest building site in the UK. Their work to protect the project people, property, information and wider reputation in the north Somerset community received accolades across four categories including the Outstanding Leader on site.
Project Delivery Director, Nigel Cann announced that Al McBride, the Accounts Director for G4S Secure Solutions UK received the gold award as the Outstanding Leader. When nominating Al for the award, the HPC Site Security Manager, Frank Cannon (pictured left) said: “In my humble opinion, and having spent 37-plus years in the security industry, Al is easily in the top five percent of the UK manned guarding industry managers and will always be at the top of my pick list. The fact that a security leader has received such accolade within a global leading mega-construction project should not be overlooked.”
Al had earlier lead his team on the stage to receive the Best on Site Supplier gold award from within the supply chain category. That category included 168 onsite suppliers from a total number of 10,000 suppliers, from across the globe.
The need to innovate and create cost-efficient solutions to mitigate evolving adversarial risks associated with the ever-changing construction surroundings is not lost on G4S – a fact recognised in two further categories on the night. David Southwick and his engineers within his Security Infrastructure Provider (SIP) team collected a bronze award for Technical Collaboration only beaten by such industry giants as General Electrics; and a bespoke mechanical and electrical alliance which included the likes of Cavendish Nuclear, Doosan and Balfour Beatty Bailey. When delivering the temporary security systems for use during the construction phase of the project, the SIP have to work with numerous stakeholders to continually adapt their solutions to provide the resilience; while also meeting the Office of the Nuclear Regulator’s (ONR) expectations for a licenced nuclear site. As EDF say, HPC is not just another construction site and thus the flexible security technology to protect the emerging critical national infrastructure is often bespoke and innovative.
The final time members of the G4S security team were called to the stage was to receive bronze for the Best Collaborative Team (pictured). This recognised the joint client (EDF Energy) and supplier (G4S Secure Solutions UK) partnership approach that sees HPC Security collaborate with multiple stakeholders across the site and other project locations in the district to deliver a risk-proportionate and cost-efficient level of protection. Collecting the award from Nigel Cann were Frank Cannon, Luke Pearce, the Construction Security Lead and Jan Chowen – one of the many security risk managers within the G4S team. This accolade recognises the day-to-day work of the 300-plus members of the HPC Security team.
The partnership between HPC Security and G4S Secure Solutions featured in a three-part article in the July, August and September 2019 editions of Professional Security magazine:
Part 2 is here: https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/online-magazine/24-07-19/29-08/#p=58.
Part 1 is here: https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/online-magazine/20-06-19/29-07/#p=40.
Part 3 is here: https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/online-magazine/23-08-19/29-09/#p=62.
More about G4S
The project, which began construction in 2016, is still relatively early into its construction: G4S won its contract in 2015 and the project is due to commission its first reactor in 2025. For more, see the G4S UK website.
