insights The winners of the 2019 Recognition Awards are...

On Monday, 21 October we unveiled the winners of the UK & Europe Recognition Awards at a glamorous event in Birmingham. More than 370 guests gathered together to celebrate the excellence and dedication of colleagues and teams who have achieved positive and inspirational results for our business, our clients and the wider community.

“It’s no secret that in the UK & Europe, we’re ambitious for growth. Our people are at the heart of our success and these awards are one way for me, along with the rest of the operational leadership team, to say ‘thank you’ for the great work that they do,” said Mark Anderson, interim CEO, UK & Europe, in his opening remarks.

This year’s Recognition Awards were themed around the magic of cinema, and there were many special touches throughout the evening which brought this to life, including immersive visuals and music themed to each category. Our host for the evening, Ed Hancock was also on theme – he moonlights as a Framework Manager in Transportation alongside his job as a professional actor!  

After dinner, the awards ceremony got underway and members of the senior leadership team took to the stage to announce our winners. We received 448 nominations in total, which gave our judges a hard task to shortlist the best of the best. The winner of each category was presented with an exclusive Recognition Awards trophy that was designed in-house by Craig Wilsoncroft and Toby Loughton.  

Before everyone hit the dance floor, Mark Anderson surprised the crowd by unveiling a Special Award for the Birmingham Lifesavers – a team of first aiders from our Birmingham office whose quick and calm response saved the life of a colleague in Transportation earlier this year.

The Recognition Awards are all about recognising our people and the great work they do. Congratulations to all our 2019 Recognition Awards winners and thank you to all those who nominated and took part in the judging. The UK & Europe Recognition Awards will be back in 2021!

AND THE 2019 WINNERS ARE…​

Diversity & Inclusion: Louise Hetherington 

Louise is an ambassador and champion for diversity, inclusion and well-being within the business. She has held many roles promoting an open, diverse and inclusive culture that includes being the Diversity and Inclusion Lead for Infrastructure, chairing our disability network, ENABLE, or being a STEM coordinator and a Mental Health First Aider. Louise has adopted a truly inclusive approach both within the business and the wider community, inspiring the next generation.​

Employee of the Year

Abhishek Jain

Abhishek is ambitious, tenacious, reliable and goes out of his way to integrate and develop multi-disciplinary teams. 

Alex Lawlor

Our corporate clients trust Alex’s project management abilities, technical understanding and willingness to always go that extra mile. 

Isabelle Smith

Isabelle’s technical skillset and leadership ability has enabled her career to develop quickly, and her influence to extend outside of Atkins.

Judy Noble

Judy performs above and beyond expectations, but most importantly, she cares passionately about the success of the business.  

Michael (Yat Kit) Chung

Michael’s collaborative nature means that he’s able to navigate challenges to drive solutions and maximise success for our business and clients.​ 

People Manager of the Year: Jessica Smith

Jessica is a natural manager of people both inside and outside our business. As a successful Project Manager, she is a proven leader who can be relied upon to steer her team through technically and logistically challenging projects. Jessica spends significant time with her team to identify strengths and motivations that will help them reach their full potential.​ 

Project of the Year (£50,000 - £1,000,000): FLOURISH

This Atkins-led consortium project has advanced the UK’s ambition to be a world leader in the connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) sector. The aim was to advance the successful implementation of CAVs by developing services that link user needs and system requirements. Through a pioneering, multi-sector approach, FLOURISH has delivered ground-breaking findings that that will be used to enable the deployment of safe, secure and trusted CAVs worldwide. 

Technical Excellence: Triton Knoll Offshore Wind Farm

Atkins’ design of the 92 monopile foundations of the Triton Knoll Offshore Wind Farm is a first-class example of integrated geotechnical and structural engineering from across our Oil & Gas sectors, and a large step forward for state-of-the art green energy. Exemplifying our core value of collaboration, the team overcame several complex challenges together. Most notable is the integrated geotechnical and structural design of the primary monopile substructure, where they used advanced engineering techniques, cutting edge research and design automation to achieve savings of more than £50 million for the client.

Young Professional of the Year

Advanced Apprentice of the Year: Joel Shevlin

Joel is our first-ever apprentice in Transport Planning. He’s undertaken a secondment to Transport for Greater Manchester, has had successful entries in external competitions, conducted fundraising activities, and is dedicated to STEM work.

Higher Apprentice of the Year: Ayesha Ghazli 

Ayesha has drafted a Project Managers Guide, supported critical business development activities with CRM, and run a campaign with MindApples to raise mental health awareness within the business.   

Graduate of the Year: Rose Whitfield 

Rose has produced a Power BI tool for a major project and is promoting the use of Microsoft Teams to improve collaboration. She is currently on secondment in India. 

Safety & Wellbeing: Mindfulness at Work

The Mindfulness at Work group brings colleagues from across our global business together to raise awareness of the importance of our wellbeing, with the aim of improving wellbeing through the practice of mindfulness. This is a grassroots initiative which has blossomed into a weekly webcast that over 3000 employees benefit from. 

Special CEO Award: Birmingham Lifesavers

These colleagues used their First Aiders training in a life or death situation; their quick and calm response ultimately saved one of our colleague’s lives. Their successful actions took the idea of looking out for one another to a whole new level and the team are a credit to our organisation. 

Well done everyone! We are already looking forward to the next edition of the awards!