The success of any business can be attributed to many factors, but for those who are that step ahead of the rest, diversity is a key ingredient to being the leader in their field of expertise.
From its origins in 1996, Obelisk has become an internationally competitive professional engineering services who provide design build and maintenance solutions to telecoms and power sectors in Ireland, UK and South Africa.
Currently Obelisk employ over 300 people based across their office locations in Dublin, Manchester and Cape Town and compliment this with contracting partners.
To achieve the success that has been garnered by the company over the years, there has been a long-standing emphasis on Safety, Quality and Production.
This includes ensuring the safety of not only their employees, but to any persons who are involved directly or indirectly on their sites.
Safety is a key pillar of everything they do has been rewarded on numerous occasions as their trophy wall will testify, as they recently picked up their sixth consecutive Gold at the NISO awards.
In January 2018, Obelisk received an All-Ireland Construction Utility Services award at the 26th Annual NISO / NISG Safety Awards presentation, which took place in Galway.
This was the twelfth consecutive year that Obelisk has received this award at this prestigious annual Health and safety award ceremony.
These awards are recognition of Obelisk’ standing as one of the top 10 best companies in Ireland and is testament to the policies, procedures and buy in of Obelisk staff and our contracting partners to ensure a consistent and professional health and safety approach.
SHEQ Director at Obelisk is Paul Ablitt who has over 25 years’ experience in the health and safety industry and believes passionately that Health and Safety is the key to any companies success.
“I started off as a Postman with the Royal Mail and I worked my way up to their engineering department where I first started to get involved in health and safety,” said Paul.
“So to achieve the role of a director with Obelisk is something that I’m very proud of. It has taken a lot of hard work and effort, but they are a great company to work for and it is all a team effort.”
Paul admits that being recognised at national level is rewarding, but he admits that despite making strides in the health and safety sector, there is always room for improvement.
“There has been huge strides made with regards to health and safety in our working territories over the past few years, but we cannot be complacent we must continue to get better every day
“Each country you go into have their own set of safety standards which are usually designed by the company that you are working for and you have to be able to adapt to these, which I feel is something that we have become accustomed too.”
Paul stressed that from the top right through the company, everyone was ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ when it came to health and safety.
“The company would invest a lot of money and time into safety management. There would be in-house training carried out all the time and this includes our CEO Jarlath Finnegan”
With a “Zero Harm, Zero Accidents” ethos in place, every project is addressed the same when it comes to health and safety.
“We understand that our people are the greatest asset to our organisation. We strive to achieve a positive safety culture by empowering confidence, promoting recognition and providing coaching to assist our people in making the appropriate decisions for themselves and their teams in each work environment.”
Site audits are carried out as part of the safety team’s daily duties, while their approach to safety is reviewed at management level on a regular basis.
“Even though, we have achieved much success in regards to health and safety, we are committed to advancing SHEQ standards and practices for the benefit of our employees, their families, our clients and society in general.”
Certification wise, Obelisk have achieved the ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015 and OHSAS 18001:2007.
Since September just gone the business has a new CEO in Jarlath Finnegan who has a long-standing reputation within Obelisks industries and across their territories. Jarlath has put a new executive team in place which includes Paul and he admits that they are happy with the direction of the business at the moment.
“We are very busy at present and have a number of projects ongoing. Internally there have been big changes, but the aim is the same and that is to drive the company forward.
“Our reputation for providing an excellent service precedes us now and it is essential that we not only maintain that level of service but try to improve on it in any way that we can in the future.”
Contact Details:
Obelisk
Unit 13 / 301 Northwest Business Park
Ballycoolin
Dublin 15
D15 HY92
Tel: +353 1 6854516
Taken from Building Ireland Magazine, January 2019, Vol 5 No 1
