Fulton Hogan has been recognised with a major international award for innovation, picking up the Premier Award in the Innovation Achiever’s Award category as part of the UK based Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) International Innovation and Research Awards, announced in London earlier this week.

Fulton Hogan’s New Zealand Chief Executive, Robert Jones, says the company is delighted with the award.

“We are proud to receive this external recognition for our overall programme to encourage and develop innovative ideas from our 6,000 strong workforce, whether it’s from the workers on the front-line or from one of our back office teams,” he says.

Chloe Smith, Fulton Hogan’s National Innovation Manager says the company’s innovation programme has a strong industry grounding backed by more technical research where required.

“Our industry base means we’re identifying opportunities and investing in improvements suggested by our teams who are out there ‘doing it’. With the innovation grounded in the reality at the frontline, we get strong early evidence if the innovation is going to make a difference and can be applied elsewhere to improve best practice business-wide.

“This award acknowledges the value of having an open forum for the collection and development of innovative ideas from our staff across all levels of the organisation. This year our focus will be on opening this to our customers to allow us to work on solving their problems,” she said.

Fulton Hogan faced up against teams from as far afield as Hong Kong and Malaysia to pick up the award.

The innovation programme has already contributed to gains in the areas of safety, productivity, sustainability and quality control. For example, to help improve skid resistance on roads, Fulton Hogan developed a recycled water cutter waste system which increases job quality and safety, boosts sustainability and dramatically reduce costs.