Distinguished Service to Safety Award

Adam Bates

Adam Bates provides strategic leadership for environmental, health and safety operations across North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. Throughout his career, he has been recognized for his ability to translate safety strategy into measurable results, advancing both operational excellence and a culture of prevention across complex global organizations.

At Vibrantz, he has led development and implementation of standardized global safety systems and governance frameworks across 55 facilities worldwide, strengthening enterprisewide risk management processes, enhancing leadership accountability and significantly increasing employee engagement in safety. These efforts resulted in more than 10,600 reported hazards and 10,000 completed safety observations, reflecting a workforce actively engaged in identifying and addressing risks before incidents occur.

He is widely respected for fostering a culture of employee ownership, proactive hazard identification, and continuous improvement. His leadership helped multiple facilities and regions achieve sustained injury-free performance while driving a substantial reduction in workplace injuries across the company. By emphasizing prevention, accountability and consistent safety expectations, he has demonstrated how strong leadership can create lasting improvements in organizational resilience and safety performance.

Mike Court

Mike Court is widely recognized as one of Canada’s most influential leaders in construction safety. Throughout his career, he has championed innovative, evidence-based approaches to worker protection, helping transform how organizations identify, manage and prevent serious workplace risks.

A strong advocate for Serious Injury and Fatality (SIF) prevention and energy-based safety, Court has played a pivotal role in advancing these concepts within Graham and across the construction industry. His leadership has helped move organizations beyond safety metrics toward a deeper understanding of high-consequence risks, fundamentally changing how safety is managed on complex construction projects.

As a founding member and former chair of the Construction Safety Research Alliance, he helped advance groundbreaking research on serious injury prevention, safety culture and predictive analytics. He also has provided influential leadership through the Canadian Construction Safety Council, where he helped unite major contractors around shared safety priorities and common standards. He has supported adoption of industrywide safety improvements, including Type 2 hard hats, enhanced fall protection requirements and standardized hand protection practices that have strengthened worker protections across Canada.

Mohamed Elashheb

Mohamed Elashheb is an accomplished health, safety and environmental leader with more than 20 years of experience driving safety excellence across complex global operations.

Mohamed has been instrumental in advancing safety outcomes at APTIM, helping reduce total recordable incident rate by about 60% while overseeing as many as 11 million work hours annually. He led implementation of innovative safety systems and programs that enhanced employee engagement, improved risk management practices and fostered a culture of continuous safety improvement across diverse operations worldwide.

Mohamed has played a key role in APTIM receiving the 2023 NSC Green Cross Safety Innovation award and has supported efforts that contributed to earning more than 280 National Safety Council awards. He is an active supporter of NSC initiatives, promoting participation in National Safety Month, NSC Safety Congress & Expo events and the use of NSC resources to strengthen safety performance.

Mohamed is committed to serving his community. He has expanded access to CPR and first aid training, championed automated external defibrillator placement initiatives, mentored emerging safety professionals and supported pedestrian safety improvements that help create safer communities.

David Netti

David Netti is a highly respected safety and risk management leader dedicated to making workplace safety practical, accessible and sustainable for organizations of all sizes. At Captive Resources, he supports more than 7,000 employers and a network of over 700 risk control consultants, helping organizations strengthen safety performance and reduce workplace injuries through practical, real-world solutions.

During his career, David has focused on supporting small and mid-sized employers that often lack dedicated safety resources, developing programs and initiatives that make safety easier to understand, implement and sustain. His approach is rooted in listening to organizations, understanding barriers to adoption and creating solutions that empower employers to build lasting safety capabilities rather than depend on outside expertise.

David has served as an NSC Board member, delegate and delegate chair, and has helped expand access to NSC resources to nearly 4,000 companies, broadening reach and impact of workplace safety initiatives nationwide. He also has led national efforts addressing worker impairment, naloxone access, fleet safety and transportation telematics. His work helped increase naloxone availability to more than 3,000 companies and contributed to the development of telematics resources that reached about 5,000 organizations within six months.

Known for his servant leadership philosophy, David is committed to empowering others, fostering collaboration and building stronger safety cultures that endure over time. His work is driven by a simple but powerful belief: every injury prevented means someone gets home safely to their family.