Amey’s having a positive impact

Practical examples of responsible business being good business.

Leading public services provider Amey, which employs over 250 people across seven contracts in Northern Ireland, has launched a Community Engagement Plan to bring together all its community initiatives across the country.

Amey is working in partnership with several key public sector and charity organisations including the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), Sustrans and the Belfast Education and Library Board (BELB) to deliver a series of community projects. These include road safety campaigns, environmental clean-ups and maximising the availability of community buildings.

All this work will now be co-ordinated through Amey’s Community Engagement Plan which focuses on People, Planet and Profit.

Damien Toner, Director at Amey in Northern Ireland, explains: “Amey works in the heart of communities and we believe it’s important to give back to local people, especially in these challenging economic times.

“Amey hopes to extend this commitment through delivering an improved Community Engagement Plan, which will help us share best practice and maximise opportunities with existing partners.”

In Northern Ireland, Amey is a member of Business in the Community (BITC) – a membership organisation which aims to encourage every business to act responsibly.

Lisa McIlvenna from BITC said: “We are delighted to work closely with Amey. The company is committed to leading the way on corporate responsibility in Northern Ireland and beyond, because they recognise that responsible business is good business.”

People

Amey manages and maintains 125km of strategic roads in Northern Ireland, including the M1, A1 and A4, on behalf of the Roads Service.

To help keep drivers safe in all weather conditions, the company partnered with the PSNI in October 2011 to stage a winter road safety road show which toured three locations on the network that Amey manages including Dungannon, Lisburn and Banbridge.

As part of the initiative, Amey and the PSNI distributed more than 1,500 ‘winter packs’ to road users. Each pack included advice on winter driving, an ice scraper, screen wash and a travel mug.

In addition, Amey has funded 10 pupils from schools in Belfast to complete the Institute of Advanced Motorists ‘Roadwise’ driving course at the end of last year to help them drive safe in their first winter.

Profit

Amey supports over 4,000 pupils by delivering facilities management services in five schools on behalf of BELB.

As part of the contract, Amey and BELB work with the registered charity Artemis to give the community access to the facilities of the five Belfast schools.

In this unique partnership between the public, private and voluntary sectors, facilities can be hired by community groups outside of core academic hours at an affordable rate and any financial surpluses are then fed back into the community and used for learning and skills activities.

Planet

Amey works in partnership with the UK charity Sustrans to maintain sections of the National Cycle Network in Northern Ireland.

In 2010-2011, 60 Amey employees spent their company funded community day to improve the Comber Greenway route which sees 122,000 journeys annually. This included installing bat boxes and planting trees to boost wildlife.

Meanwhile Amey is on track to save 520,000kg of carbon emissions in one year through installing power-saving software in around 2,000 library computers on the Electronic Libraries for Northern Ireland project, where Amey looks after the entire information

and communications technology infrastructure across 99 sites through a contract with Libraries NI.

For more information visit:

www.amey.co.uk

Report sponsored by George Best Belfast City Airport