GEV Wind Power’s track record in safety has been recognised with two industry awards. The global-leading wind turbine blade repair and maintenance experts won the Innovation in Safety and the Safety Performance and Delivery accolades at Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy’s (SGRE) Annual Contractors Safety Conference for the Northern Europe and Middle East (NEME) region.
It is the second year in a row that GEV has won awards at SGRE’s event which, this year was held in The Hague.
GEV lifted the Innovation in Safety title for the development of new initiatives to improve safety rescue drills combined with skills training for Leading Edge Protection (LEP). LEP helps to combat leading edge erosion which is the single largest maintenance-related issue in the wind industry.
The company also received the Safety Performance & Delivery award for the record number of safety observations reported by GEV technicians during 2023.
David Fletcher, GEV Group’s chief executive officer, said: “This is tremendous recognition for our team and underlines the pivotal role our technicians play in setting industry standards and championing awareness of hazard free working environments. It is also testament to GEV’s proactive approach to health and safety reporting from everyone within the company.”
The awards build on GEV’s success at the SGRE event where the company was last year named the Major Projects Division Overall Winner for Safety Performance Delivery. GEV won the accolade for a significant increase in safety reporting across all divisions, led by its QHSE team and in-field technicians.
George Guy, Group QHSE manager at GEV, said: “We take immense pride in having a team that genuinely values the importance of health and safety. Our proactive approach ensures potential on-site hazards are identified and assessed promptly, whilst also highlighting positive safety practices. This not only allows our expert in-field team to work efficiently, but also minimises downtime, and helps us to uphold an incident-free working environment.
GEV has fast evolved as a global leader in blade maintenance and repair through organic growth and acquisitions which build on its blade competence capabilities and in-house expertise across complex repairs, upgrades and maintenance combined with specialist blade advisory, risk and technology solutions.
Most recently, the Group acquired Rigcom Group, Australia’s largest domestic independent service provider (ISP) which specialises in field deployed rotor blade maintenance and a range of height safety services.
GEV has more than 1,000 technicians worldwide – believed to be the world’s largest blade-focused talent pool – and supports over 200 projects across four continents including Europe, North America and Asia with a network of operational bases in the UK, US, Australia, Poland and Denmark.
In the Group’s 2023 financial year alone, 1,122 blades were maintained by GEV – enough to annually power 320,000 homes and save more than 1million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
