Our EMCOR UK water sector colleagues, who are now part of OCS, have won the 2026 RoSPA Water Sector Award for the third time in five years. In the same year, the same teams earned a RoSPA President’s Award for their Thames Water partnership and an eighth consecutive Gold Medal on the Anglian Water account.
Three major honours in a single year. Across five consecutive years of competition, these teams have either won or been Highly Commended every time.
What the Record Reflects
The Water Sector Award is presented by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and judged across every organisation in the UK water industry, including the water companies themselves. The winning submission drew on the combined health and safety performance of two of the UK’s largest water partnerships.
The President’s Award has a precise qualification: ten consecutive Gold Medals. The Thames Water teams reached that milestone through a decade of sustained improvement. The Anglian Water account’s eighth consecutive Gold reflects the same approach: two separate contracts, one disciplined standard.
The water sector carries particular safety obligations. Colleagues work across live treatment infrastructure, pumping stations, and distribution networks where the consequences of incidents reach far beyond the immediate workplace. Sustained Gold-level performance in this environment requires safety management that is genuinely embedded, not periodically refreshed.
The People Behind It
Achieving this across two entirely separate accounts, independently and simultaneously, is significant. Each contract has its own operational context, its own workforce, its own pressures. The consistency of approach across both is what the RoSPA record reflects.
This kind of sustained performance across two major accounts doesn’t come from systems alone. It comes from colleagues who treat safety as a daily commitment rather than a compliance exercise, and from genuine partnership with customers, working together over years to raise the bar.
“These results reflect years of consistent, disciplined work by the teams responsible for health and safety across our water sector operations. Winning the Water Sector Award for a third time, alongside the President’s Award and a Gold Medal, confirms the standard we have set and the strength of the partnership approach that has sustained it. Safety performance at this level is built through genuine collaboration, where EMCOR UK and its customers have raised the bar together, year after year.”
Operations Director, EMCOR UK, now part of OCS
