CATEGORIES
Please note that the 2012 call for entries have now closed.
Utility of the Year
Customer Care Award
Team of the Year
Marketing Initiative of the Year
IT Initiative of the Year
Staff development award
Supply Chain Excellence
Environment Award
Community Initiative of the Year
Capital project management award
Capital project management award
Does your company deliver capital projects on time and within budget? This award aims to identify best practice through the effective management of a utility capital project that was completed during 2011/12.
Community Initiative of the Year
Most UK utility businesses are active in community programmes. This award aims to recognise the significant effort and care that goes into this often unpublicised work, which benefits the recipients far more than the image of the company.
Environment Award
This award is for the company or a specific project that demonstrates a clear and conscious commitment to good environmental management which goes further than legal or regulatory compliance. The entry should show clear benefits have been achieved from implementation of the policy or project.
Working closely with contractors and suppliers, as well as taking full advantage of their expertise and experience, can help utilities make dramatic improvements in efficiency, customer service and overall performance. This award is for the utility company that can demonstrate innovating working with supply and contracting organisations, whether that is optimising the relationship; finding ways to draw on others’ experience; making step-changes in managing the supply chain; or creating a partnership that is more than the sum of its members.
Skills shortages due to an ageing workforce and the problem of recruiting talented young people are set to become one of the utility industries’ greatest challenges.
Entries should demonstrate a sound, thoughtful approach to staff development that meets the organisation’s skills requirements and provides long term career development for employees, whether at apprentice, graduate or other stages of their career.
The effective use of information technology (IT) by utilities is essential to providing the high service levels customers have come to expect while containing costs. Entries to IT Initiative Award should demonstrate the use of modern – not necessarily cutting edge – IT systems to help the business achieve its aims
Marketing Initiative of the Year
Marketing activity has to be properly thought-through if it is to be successful and cost effective in building and differentiating the brand. This award will be judged on strategy, targeting, creativity and results of a marketing initiative completed or continuing in 2011/12. The target group need not be domestic customers.
Any utility is only as good as its people and this award is for the team that went the extra mile in 2011/12 to deliver a defined project for the company or one of its stakeholders. This may be a special-purpose team bringing together otherwise disparate members or an existing team that has taken on a challenge or performed above and beyond expectations. NB if you want to highlight an ongoing relationship with your suppliers and contractors, you should enter the Supply Chain Excellence award.
In all sectors, regulated or competitive, customer service is increasingly important. Entrants for this award need to demonstrate a true understanding of their customers’ needs. Judges will be looking for evidence of something more than “business as usual” or mere compliance with industry codes of practice.
Utility of the Year
Is your utility exceptional? This year we’d like to invite utilities to tell us about the achievements that make them a contender for Utility of the Year.
Our Utility of the Year will have been successful in all aspects of utility business. But it will also demonstrate outperformance. That may be because it sets benchmarks across utility management and is an exemplar of all-round performance. It may highlight a single aspect of its work - setting a new standards for the entire industry. It may have reflect a response to external pressures, or innovation. The choice is yours: how have you led the industry?
