Awards

04 08 2026

GVA Achieves Gold: Celebrating Two Years of Supporting the Armed Forces Community

We are proud and delighted to announce that GVA has been awarded the 2026 Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS) Gold Award. It’s the highest badge available under the Armed Forces Covenant, and reaching it just two years after joining the scheme is a fantastic achievement for the whole GVA team.

For Alan Gray, who has led GVA’s engagement with the Armed Forces community throughout this journey, the award is a milestone worth celebrating: “Two years ago we set ourselves the target of reaching Gold, and to hit that so early is a fantastic achievement. It’s a real credit to everyone who’s supported us along the way.”

Our journey to Gold

GVA signed the Armed Forces Covenant in August 2024, and from there the journey to Gold — via Silver along the way — has been steady, deliberate, and built on genuine engagement. What started as a single team member with a military background has grown into a group of three veterans within the business, each bringing the discipline, reliability, and rounded experience that a military career builds.

Here’s how the last two years have unfolded:

August 2024

• Signed the Armed Forces Covenant
2025

• January — Silver workshop and expressed interest
• February — Cadet Careers Fair
• March — Updated CFAV mobilisation policy
• June — Notified of Silver Award
• July — Workshop: veterans with convictions
• August — Hull 4 Heroes careers fair
• October — Silver Awards dinner
2026

• January — ERS Gold workshop
• February — Yorkshire Cadet Fair and Cadet Trust donation
• March — Great Tommy Sleepout, Defib donation, Gold submission
July 2026

• Awarded the Defence ERS Gold Award

Becoming part of the wider Yorkshire Armed Forces Covenant community has been just as important as the milestones themselves. Getting to know other organisations working towards the same goals, and building relationships with our Defence Relationship Managers, Pauline King and Richard Lenton, has helped GVA mature into a genuine advocate for the Armed Forces community rather than simply a signatory to the Covenant. It’s been a grassroots effort throughout — supporting organisations and individuals who are themselves doing brilliant work at a local level to help veterans reintegrate into civilian life.

What Gold means to GVA

Being part of the Armed Forces Covenant, and now holding its highest recognition, reflects something personal for many at GVA. As Alan puts it, it’s about “providing support and recognition that the company is Armed Forces community friendly” — something that matters deeply to those who have served. Having left the structure and camaraderie of the Armed Forces, finding that same sense of family within GVA has been a welcome and important part of the transition to civilian working life.

Celebrating with the wider community

GVA will celebrate this achievement alongside the North of England Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Association (RFCA) at the 2026 ERS Gold Awards Ceremony and Lunch, taking place on Saturday, 14th November 2026 at the Hospitium, York. The event is timed to coincide with the Royal Gun Salute for His Majesty King Charles III in the Museum Gardens, York, and certificates will be presented by His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of North Yorkshire alongside a senior military representative.

It follows a busy few months of engagement with the wider Armed Forces community, including an invitation to the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo with the Yorkshire community in September, and builds on the relationships GVA has formed since joining the Covenant.

What’s next for GVA

Gold isn’t the end of the journey — if anything, it opens the door to doing more. Over the coming months and years, GVA plans to:

Attend the Career Transition Partnership (CTP) Careers Day in Salford on 11th September, engaging with service personnel preparing to leave the Armed Forces, with a particular focus on recruiting skilled tradespeople such as mechanics.
Apply to feature on the CTP’s training provider website once GVA’s training centre has been established for two years, from April 2027. This will allow service leavers, wherever they’re based, to access GVA’s courses using their Enhanced Learning Credits.
Build a training-to-employment pathway, offering courses ranging from strimming and hedge trimming to chainsaw operation and mechanised vegetation management equipment, with the opportunity for participants to progress into employment with GVA itself.

It’s a natural extension of everything GVA has built over the last two years: not just supporting the Armed Forces community from the outside, but creating real, practical routes into training and employment for those leaving service. If you’re a veteran, service leaver, or reservist looking for training or career opportunities, we’d love to hear from you.

08 07 2026

GVA’s Four-Year Journey to Customer Maturity Excellence

Awards

We’re proud to have achieved a Supply Chain Customer Maturity Model (SCCMM) score of 4.2, marking the completion of a remarkable improvement journey since we joined the National Highways scheme in 2022.

Year

SCCMM Score

Milestone

2022

1.8

GVA’s first customer maturity submission

2024

3.2

Maturity Level 3 (Committing) achieved

2026

4.2

Maturity Level 4 (Mature), with Level 5 characteristics emerging

In just four years, we’ve moved through two full maturity levels — not by chance, but through sustained commitment, strong leadership, and a genuine cultural shift in how we think about the people who use and are affected by the roads we work on.

Customer Is Everyone’s Responsibility

For National Highways, ‘customer’ is one of three core imperatives sitting alongside safety and delivery — and we’ve made sure that principle doesn’t just live in a policy document. It’s built into how we induct new starters, brief our workforce, and plan our schemes.

Our Customer Strategy, most recently refreshed in February 2026, sets out the ambition plainly: to enhance customer experience and satisfaction on every job, whether that’s a live National Highways scheme or work around our own offices and local community. It’s built around our ‘Your Environment Our Responsibility’ ethos, and structured around four objectives — Reputation, Engagement, Service and Evaluate — each designed to keep the customer’s needs embedded in everyday decision-making rather than treated as an afterthought.

That thinking is introduced from day one. Every person joining one of our contracts sits through a Contract Induction that positions the customer as central to how we work — defining who our customers are, the people who use or are affected by National Highways’ roads and services, and setting out our commitment to enhancing their experience, because as the induction reminds every new starter: we’re customers too.

Best Practices Recognised by Moderators

We’ve been commended for the below best practices:

Customer Strategy
Contract Induction slides
Customer Toolbox Talk
Supervisor role cards
Network for Nature video
“Grow Our Tree” framework
A63 case study
M57/M58 Sightlines case study

Reaching Beyond Our Own Fence Line

Our improvement hasn’t stopped at our own front door. Over the past two years, we’ve taken an active leadership role in the wider National Highways supply chain community — contributing to the North-West Customer Working Group, presenting at the SCCMM Best Practice Event, buddying with other suppliers on their own maturity journeys, and sharing tools like our Network for Nature video as best practice for others to learn from.

We’ve also seen customer thinking show up in our delivery decisions themselves: prioritising off-network access to avoid unnecessary carriageway closures, coordinating with neighbouring schemes to reduce roadspace occupation, and building social value directly into how we plan our projects — from biodiversity net gain on the A56/M65 to community-focused delivery on the A63.

Customer Service Week 2024

Looking Ahead

Reaching Level 4 is a genuine achievement, but we’re not standing still. Our Customer Strategy sets its sights on achieving Maturity Level 4 across every theme — Governance, Culture & Social Value, Engagement, Systems & Processes, and Continuous Improvement — before the end of RIS 3 in 2030, with the moderated assessment noting clear, credible signs of Level 5 practice emerging.

This score of 4.2 reflects four years of consistent effort by everyone at GVA — from the people delivering work on the network every day to the leadership setting our direction. It’s a milestone we’re proud to celebrate, and a foundation for the next stage of the journey.

Think Smart! Think Safe!

02 04 2026

GVA Celebrates Fourth National Highways Passport Gold Award

Awards

Consistency is often the hardest thing to maintain in high-stakes environments, but at GVA, it is simply how we operate. We are incredibly proud to announce that we have achieved a fourth National Highways Passport Gold Award.

This isn’t just a badge for the office wall; it is a reflection of a culture that refuses to cut corners on safety and site management.

Excellence on the M61: The Ash Dieback Delivery Scheme

This year’s recognition specifically highlights the stellar work on the M61 J5 – M6 Ash Dieback Delivery scheme. In a sector where conditions can change by the hour, the project team demonstrated exactly what “best practice” looks like in the field.

Why Gold Matters

The National Highways Passport Gold Award is reserved for contracts that demonstrate they are managing workforce data and safety in real time. By hitting this milestone four times, GVA has shown that our approach to safe, compliant, and well-managed operations isn’t a one-off effort—it is our standard operating procedure.

“Since we mandated the National Highways Passport in 2023, we have consistently aimed for Passport Gold. This award is a testament to the teams who do the ‘invisible’ work every day—the swiping, the checking, and the diligent reporting that ensures everyone goes home safe.”

Alan Gray, HSQE Manager, GVA

A Huge Thank You

An achievement of this calibre belongs to the people on the ground. A massive thank you goes out to the entire project team for your continued focus and dedication. Your commitment to the Passport system ensures that our sites remain among the safest and most efficient in the country.