Carey Building Contractors was named as the winner of the ‘Excellence in Corporate Social Responsibility by an SME’ award at the 13th Annual Corporate Social Responsibility Awards, which took place in Dublin on September 1st 2016. The annual award ceremony hosted by Chambers Ireland recognises the significant contribution that Irish business makes to society through corporate social responsibility practices.
The award presented to Carey Building Contractors recognizes an ongoing collaborative research partnership with the Department of Building and Civil Engineering in the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, which has focused on benchmarking resource efficiency practices on a number of construction projects over the past two years. The research carried out by Jan Gottsche and Dr. Mark Kelly of GMIT, which was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Green Enterprise Scheme has resulted in the implementation of a number of energy reduction, water reduction and waste minimisation strategies resulting in significant cost savings and reduced environmental impact.
The award entry was based on the construction of the Podiatry Unit in Merlin Park Hospital, which was completed in February 2015. The implemented resource efficiency strategies on this project resulted in cost savings of approximately €8,000, a reduction in energy use of over 6,000kWhrs and the prevention and reuse of over 160 tonnes of material waste.