Working for healthier workplaces: Call for nominations

The Award honours significant achievements in the field of occupational ill health prevention which show a real, measurable impact on improving health or reducing ill health at work. 

It was initiated to mark BOHS's Golden Jubilee in 2003 and is named in honour of Peter Isaac, a founder and first Secretary of the Society. It can be made to an individual, team or organisation.  

The award was last presented in 2012 to occupational hygienist, Chris Money, for his leading role in empowering those who most need occupational hygiene skills and those who can most effectively deliver them.  Chris Money was extensively involved in the development of the control banding system for assessment and management of workplace risks and its incorporation into the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regime. His work was also instrumental in delivering the profile which occupational hygiene now enjoys as a discipline with the REACH Regulation itself. 

Other winners and their selected projects or activities have included:

• Frank Rodrigues, for reducing exposure to noise and vibration during car surface and finishing preparations
• Michelle Aldous, for Constructing Better Health, an occupational health support pilot for small construction firms
• Dr Olivia Carlton, for London Underground’s Health Improvement Plan
• Professor Sally Haw, for The Clean-air Legislation Evaluation (CLEAN) Collaboration, an evaluation of the effects of Scotland’s smoke-free legislation
• Dr Mark Piney, for reducing exposure and ill health from isocyanates in the motor vehicle repair industry
• Dr Bob Rajan, for innovative approaches to ill health reduction at work.

The recipient of the Award will win a £1000 prize, to be used to subsidise attendance at any health and safety conference, along with an engraved trophy for the year and a framed certificate, signed by the Society’s President.  

The winner will also receive one complimentary day’s attendance and a dinner place at the BOHS 2016 Annual Conference in Edinburgh as well as complimentary Society membership for one year. 

Opening the call for nominations, Adrian Hirst, president of BOHS said: "The Peter Isaac Award presents a wonderful opportunity to celebrate focal projects and activities in occupational hygiene practice and in particular where such achievements have had a real, measurable impact on worker health or are linked to concrete targets. We look forward to considering a wide range of nominations, from specific one-off projects, whether in-progress or completed, to more sustained activities or processes.”

He added: "On behalf of the Society, I would like to urge professionals who are achieving or are aware of something pivotal in occupational hygiene and worker health practice to consider entering or nominating others. Whether it is a team working on a large project or a solo practitioner working alone, if a real difference is being made to worker health protection, we would like to hear about the project or activities.”