ORGANISATIONS from the tourism and hospitality, advanced manufacturing, housing, voluntary and public sectors across the island of Ireland have been recognised at the Best Performing Companies conference and awards held at Titanic Belfast
Organised by the Centre for Competitiveness, the awards - which were supported by Balcas, Belfast Harbour, Bombardier, FastHouse, NI Electricity Networks and Tourism NI - recognised the excellence at the heart of the 17 winning organisations.
And the highest regional accolade that can be granted, the European Foundation of Quality Management (EFQM) 2019 Ireland Excellence Award, went to Titanic Belfast.
Its chief executive Judith Owens said: “Since starting to build the organisation back in 2011, our journey has been about developing a sustainable framework of excellence and encouraging staff to apply it to everything they do.
“One in five people visiting the island of Ireland arrive with the intention of coming to Titanic Belfast and we have to live up to their expectation of excellence from before they walk in through the door until after they have left.”
A total of 15 organisations received EFQM awards while a further two were awarded the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute (COTRI) China-Ready Quality Label.
Centre for Competitiveness (www.cforc.org) chief executive Bob Barbour praised the winners for their years of effort to build best practice and embed excellence into their organisations.
“These awards are a celebration of organisations that have gone through a robust assessment against a comprehensive management improvement framework that is used widely across Europe, and increasingly in the Middle East, China and South America. It’s the same process no matter your country, sector or size.
“The application of the EFQM framework to an organisation’s operations together with the passionate pursuit of quality excellence will help them become leaner, more profitable, more sustainable and therefore more competitive.”
Titanic Belfast as winner of the Ireland Excellence Award along is now eligible to apply for the European-wide EFQM European Excellence Award.
Attendees heard presentations from companies including Denroy, Slieve Russell, Titanic Belfast, Wheatley Group (Scotland) and Young Enterprise on critical areas of performance where they are recognised as sector exemplars.
A panel discussion on energy, IoT and hyper-connectivity featured contributions from Bombardier, Centre for Sustainable Technologies at Ulster University, Energi World, NIE Networks and Smart Grid Ireland while the panel discussion on navigating a hyper-competitive marketplace featured contributions from Denroy, Instil Software, Mash Direct, SeeSense and Tourism NI.
Mr Barbour urged attendees to “listen to the reliable insights in the presentations and take them back to your organisations to drive these principles into your strategies and operations in order to achieve sustainable excellence and competitive advantage”.
