A school, a church-based community organisation, a specialist drugs distributor and the Salvation Army have won Vero’s annual RM Advancer awards.

The awards, now in their 11th year, recognise Vero clients’ achievements in improving risk management. Executives from the winning organisations and their brokers were presented with awards at a dinner in Melbourne last week.

The Armidale School, a 122-year-old independent day and boarding school in northern NSW, won the inaugural enterprise-wide award for SMEs.

The school improved its management of a wide range of risks, which included updating its heritage-listed buildings and introducing co-education.

Uniting Care Queensland won the motor vehicle risk management category for its use of anti-collision devices and smartphone apps to promote a road safety culture.

The group has 24,000 staff and volunteers providing health and community services, and has been developing a culture based on risk identification and mitigation over the past nine years.

Adelaide-based Flinders Clinical Trial Services, which stores and distributes drugs for clinical trials in Australia, New Zealand and Asia, won the property risk management award. It has operated for the past 20 years without an insurance claim.

The liability risk management award went to the Salvation Army (Eastern) for its effort to minimise risks to its 500 officers, 4400 employees and more than 15,000 volunteers, many of whom work in potentially dangerous situations.

A special commendation in the enterprise-wide category went to domestic and industrial equipment supplier TTi Group, based in Victoria.

Next year’s awards will be presented in Sydney, where a new category recognising risk management achievements in workers’ compensation will be introduced.