Zetica passes health & safety audit with flying colours

At the end of October, Zetica was audited by representatives of Laing O’Rourke. Mike Sainsbury, MD admits, “We were quietly confident but apprehensive about letting one of the UK’s largest contractors into our offices and allowing them to get ‘under our skin’ to see whether our health and safety procedures are up to their high standards and the standards of some of their largest customers such as National Grid.”

Safety advisor, Annie Lewis, has ensured that Zetica operates to a robust set of health and safety procedures that are practical to implement.  The Laing O’Rourke team was invited to request any information they required and speak to any personnel. Not only did Zetica pass with flying colours, but we were also informed that on a Laing O’Rourke contractor appraisal system for overall contract performance, recently completed Zetica contracts scored some of the highest scores they had ever seen!

Zetica Awards - 2009

A festive Christmas party was rudely interrupted by our annual award ceremony. First, Mandy Eriksen, Financial Director, reported on a profitable year and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. “Zetica is confident of its position in the market and excited about the impact new developments and new services will have. Not only will this be a benefit to our company but our customers will benefit too helping them become more efficient”, she said.

Worthy recipients of awards this year were:

Employee of the year:

Annie Lewis, Management Assistant and Safety Advisor

Annie has risen to the occasion and beyond in compiling and implementing a robust health and safety and updated procedures system which enabled Zetica to achieve Proof certification with Network Rail and pass various external audits. To be an expert in this field and sell it to hardened geophysical staff is no mean feat.

Innovation:

Shared between:

Paul Joe Howse, Senior Geophysical Technician and

Brian Barrett, Senior Geophysicist

Both individuals demonstrated quality original thinking and converted this into workable solutions which will progress Zetica’s ability to deliver standout products and be even more productive in the field.

Special CEO award:

Mark White, Geophysical Technician

Mark received the award this year for his exemplary attitude. Asger Eriksen, CEO, said; “There are few more satisfying surprises for a manager than to find that a quietly professional, co-operative and productive team member also has an enquiring mind and is clearly keen to make the most of the opportunities available.”

Well done to all recipients of an award and to the team as a whole for an excellent 2009!

Zetica Rail in the news

Zetica Rail and Balfour Beatty Rail (BBRI) are currently midway through a 1,000 mile rail ground penetrating radar survey to characterise ballast quality for the BNSF railroad company in the US. The works are designed to optimise maintenance planning by targeting the most contaminated ballast.

Zetica Rail and BBRI also recently completed a proving survey at the high tonnage loop at TTCI in Pueblo, Colorado. The object of this survey was to demonstrate the application of ground penetrating radar to mapping ballast quality and changes in formation as well as to detect buried structures. The results of these surveys and others will be presented at the Transportation Research Board meeting in January 2010 in Washington DC.

RT Swindall, director of track operations at BBRI, says: "The use of GPR to map many hundreds of route miles per week will help to bring about a step change in the planning of trackbed maintenance by railroad companies in the US. The savings potential of targeting only the highest priority ballast with confirmed quality issues will pay for the GPR survey many times over in just a single campaign. The partnership with Zetica Rail offers us the possibility to fast-track implementation of the tool based on their unrivalled experience of rail GPR."

Lunchtime Seminars

Zetica offer a popular seminar on the uses and abuses of geophysics. Engineers are brought up to date on the latest geophysical methods available in the market place and interesting areas of research and development. The presentation normally lasts 45 minutes and is case history-based with a 15 minute discussion session following.

Click here to email Ellen Stevens to discuss your requirements and arrange a seminar at your offices.