Will you be a winner in 2019?

CIEH President Dawn Welham and Chief Executive Anne Godfrey are pictured here with Phil Gilbert and David Lown, accepting the 2018 winning Environmental Hero (Housing) Excellence Award on behalf of University Centre Weston and the University of the West of England.

As CIEH President, I am really looking forward to judging the CIEH Excellence Awards for the second year running. After being so impressed by last year’s award submissions, I am relishing the opportunity to see a fresh raft of entries that demonstrate best practice in the field of environmental health.

This year, CIEH will be looking for outstanding entries across seven categories:

• Best Collaboration - new for 2019
• Best Environmental Health Project
• Best Innovative Environmental Health Solution
• Environmental Hero (Food Safety) - nomination only
• Outstanding Environmental Health Professional
• Outstanding Environmental Health Team
• Rising Environmental Health Star - nomination only

After discovering inspirational air quality and housing champions in 2017 and 2018 respectively, this year's Environmental Health Hero category turns its focus on those who are passionate about food safety. We are also pleased to announce the launch of the Best Collaboration category, so if you have teamed up with another organisation to improve standards in environmental health, we want to hear from you!

Winning a CIEH Excellence Awards provides formal recognition of achievement which is a great way to reward and motivate you and your team. It can also help attract new business, clients or employees, while also providing evidence to support tenders and bids. And while winning is a great result, being shortlisted as a finalist is also an incredible achievement in itself.

We will be announcing the winners on Wednesday 14 November at the Marriot Hotel Regent's Park in London, our exciting new venue for this year’s ceremony which is sure to be a thoroughly enjoyable event.

We want the CIEH Excellence Awards to be a platform that showcases all the amazing work taking place in environmental health. We also want it to salute the teams and individuals responsible for that work, and share their fascinating stories. Therefore, if you are proud of the work that you and your team does, or you know of someone who deserves recognition, I want to encourage you to enter or nominate this year.

To help you prepare your entry, read the tips below on what I, and my fellow judges, will be looking for in successful award submissions. I would also encourage you to look at the entries of our past winners, including the 2018 Rising Environmental Health Star, Lindsey Holmes, who is also one of this year's judges!

What do we want to see in your awards entry?

Consider the following when preparing your entry:

• Tell your story – make your project come alive
• Context – set the scene
• Criteria – provide the information required for each of your entered category’s criteria
• Succinct language – remember you only have a specified amount of words for your entry
• Be clear – assume the judges have no knowledge of your project, initiative, career or organisation.
• Timeline – each category has a stated time frame. You may have undertaken work before the start date, but the judges will only consider activity between the stated dates.
• Layout – separate your entry into clearly defined sections and focus on each one on one bullet point in the category's criteria list. This will help the judges consider like-with-like across all entries.

Review the full list of award categories, and remember you can also nominate any friends or colleagues you think deserve to be recognised, whether they’re a rising star in the industry, or a food safety hero.

The final deadline for entries is Monday 1 July at 5pm - please email us if you have any questions.

On behalf of the judging panel, I wish you the best of luck with your entry!

Dawn Welham
CIEH President