Lifetime of achievement - Paul Eaglesome

This month, health and safety manager Paul Eaglesome celebrates his 67^th birthday and eight years with the company. Paul’s hard-nosed unshakeable commitment to all our safety means we couldn’t let the milestone quietly pass. Paul strenuously acknowledges the team he works with and doesn’t want the spotlight pointed at him. Sorry Paul, this is just one way to say thank you for being a consistent advocate of health and safety and championing new approaches. 

When tackling class A drugs, our long-time health and safety manager Paul Eaglesome, insisted sunlight was the best disinfectant.

“You’re better off having it out in the open,” Paul says.

Quality Roading and Services (QRS) is a strong and successful company growing Wairoa. We specialise in civil contracting, infrastructure, traffic management, concrete, and roading.

We opposed Class A drugs by adding pre-employment and random employee hair follicle testing to traditional testing measures. Four years on, Paul, and that policy, have made the single biggest difference to the quality of person we employ and improved workplace dynamic.

Making sure people don’t get hurt is especially important to Paul as in his former life, as a prison then immigration officer, he saw pain. He worked in health and safety for the Australian Department of Immigration’s detention accommodation facilities, and at ports.

The 67-year-old grandfather has been here eight years. His forward-thinking initiatives, workplace law nous, and understanding of whakawhanaungatanga, have improved the lives of 140 staff and their families.

Paul drove attainment of our ISO standards ensuring the highest level of international quality and safety are upheld here. Under him we earned ISO 45001: 2018, ISO 14001: 2015, and ISO 9001: 2015. They anchor our operation and success and helped secure other industry prequalifications. Through Paul we now seamlessly roll into standards’ audits.

Paul is nimble creating safe workplace plans to reduce physical, chemical, manual task, and mental harm risks. Untrained in roading, he has an uncanny understanding of civil construction. Recently, he created the safe working method statements for the Te Reinga Bridge removal. The project included hundreds of contractors, work over water and heights, and New Zealand’s heaviest recorded pull. 

Paul’s gentle imperative guidance and influence are crucial to our health and safety leadership campaign called Switched On! The campaign is growing staff decision-making, confidence, and communication. “I can’t make you switch on, you’ve got to do it,” he says.

While with QRS Paul also:

-            introduced ‘tailgate talks’ eliciting staff-orientated solutions

-            revamped staff and sub-contractor inductions and management audits

-            created meaningful competency assessment processes with assessors

-            created practical onsite recording and reporting solutions

-            insisted alerts are published online

-            drove adoption of the Vault health and safety platform

-            introduced Responsible Incident Cause Analysis Method and PEEPO, and

-            oversaw staff nurse checks and healthy snacks.

Paul is always auditing and teaching onsite. He’s calm. The perfect mentor with dulcet tones. Our lost time injury frequency rate has tracked down from 4.14 in 2016 to .84 in 2023.

Always professional, Paul told us in 2022 he planned to retire, and he wanted to train someone into his position. Paul is now working alongside Ella Pegram, our health, safety, environment and quality officer.

A recent conversation between Paul and an external auditor sum him up.

Paul: “We rely on our risk registers, policies, and procedures. But in Wairoa, we have another factor – family - because family looks after family.”

Auditor: “That’s not measurable.”

Paul: “No, it’s not. But in Wairoa, at QRS, it is. That’s whakawhanaungatanga.” 

26 August 2024

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