Recalling the Health & Safety Excellence Awards 2026, held last 30th April at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Santry, Boston Scientific Clonmel's double recognition on the night was one of the standout stories of the evening, a manufacturing site that responded to a high-stakes near miss with the kind of rigorous, organisation-wide transformation that marks a genuine step change in safety culture and capability.

The first award, the Health & Safety Excellence Award in the Manufacturing category, recognised the Boston Scientific Clonmel ATEX Ready programme, a targeted response to a titanium-dust near miss that prompted the site to accelerate its approach to explosive-dust risk management across reactive metal powder processes. The team rebuilt the Explosion Protection Document from the ground up, created an equipment register with clear ownership assigned at every level, and delivered cross-functional training that took ATEX knowledge beyond a small group of specialists and embedded it across the wider business. The judging panel highlighted the practicality and clarity of the controls introduced for reactive metal powder hazards, noting that a key strength of the submission was how successfully ATEX awareness had been scaled across the organisation. The judges commended it as a well-executed programme that strengthened risk understanding and control at scale, not just at the point of incident.

The second award, Health & Safety Team of the Year for Large Organisation, recognised the Boston Scientific Clonmel EHS Team for the breadth and impact of its work across 2025. The team made risk visible, controls accessible, and ownership real across the site through a programme that combined integrated risk and chemical management, strengthened ATEX and HAZOP governance, improved emergency readiness, and mobilised employee engagement through the BEST programme. Alongside the operational improvements, the team achieved ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 recertification with no major non-conformances, a result that reflects both the quality of the management systems in place and the consistency with which those systems are applied across day-to-day operations. External and internal recognition of the team's achievements further underlined the credibility and impact of what was delivered throughout the year.

Together, the two awards reflect an EHS team and a site that approach safety not as a series of discrete initiatives but as a connected, maturing programme of work, where a near miss becomes the catalyst for systemic improvement and individual projects are embedded into a culture of ownership and accountability that reaches every corner of the manufacturing floor.

Stay tuned for the Health & Safety Excellence Awards 2027 cycle, where organisations from across Ireland will once again have the opportunity to showcase their commitment to workplace health and safety excellence.

View the full shortlist at www.hsawards.ie/shortlist, and subscribe to the newsletter to stay informed on future award cycles and industry news.