We are proud to be awarded not one, but two 2024 Australian Business Awards that recognise leaders in Business, Innovation & Technology.  

Community Contribution Award

With the Community Contribution Award, the judges recognised our commitment to delivering social sustainability outcomes, with a strategy that aligned corporate, project and local level initiatives.  

Through a robust Social Sustainability Framework, we delivered a $4.3bn contribution to social value in 2023. This result was measured using Social Value Portal’s TOMs (Themes, Outcomes, and Measures) system to measure the socio-economic impact of activity.

Always leading the way, we are proud to be the first company in Australia to utilise this international best practice tool.  

Aaron Reid, GM of Social Sustainability at Ventia reflects:

Quantifying these impacts allows us to understand the effectiveness of our initiatives, offer clients a comparative insight into performance and articulate the additional value created for society for every dollar we spend. 

"I am so happy that Ventia has been recognised with this award because we are truly leading the way in this area”, he says.

We have taken a lead role in launching the Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) Social Value Taskforce, with the objective to develop a set of national Themes, Outcomes, and Measures (TOMs) and a Social Impact Measurement Framework for ANZ. We brought together over 25 of the largest employee organisations in Australia across public, private and social sectors and together the taskforce will set the common standard for measuring and reporting social value.

The 'Pizza & Pitch' initiative has helped foster a culture of innovative confidence within Ventia.

Business Innovation Award

In the Business Innovation category, we were recognised for our forward-thinking ability to tap into the collective intelligence of our 15,000 employees, in addition to 20,000 subcontractors. 

We believe that the people who do the work every day know best how to improve so Gary Dring, our Group Manager of Innovation and his team of 17 “Innovation Founders” initiated ‘Pizza & Pitch’, an informal event inviting our people to pitch their most innovative ideas to a friendly cohort of colleagues whilst eating pizza and mingling. 

We know our people have lots of great ideas around our contracts and functions, and we wanted to find a way to harness and share them with the whole business.

“We just had to find the right way", Gary explains.

Five events have been held across Australia and New Zealand and 13 innovations have been implemented in the business with a further eight under development.

As an organisation, Ventia believes that innovation isn’t the responsibility of a single sector or unit. Every employee has opportunities to contribute game-changing ideas that can lead to innovative solutions. Ventia drive a culture of continuous improvement, which means every day, every employee aims to make the workplace safer and our service the best it can be. 

The inaugural Pizza & Pitch was held in our Melbourne office in March 2023.