Zurich Honors 10 Employees With Project Management Awards

SCHAUMBURG, Illinois, Feb. 14 -- Zurich Insurance, a property-casualty insurance company, issued the following news release:

Project Professionals Awards recognize team efforts to innovate and simplify for our customers. The awards are part of our culture of employee recognition.

Starting a project is one thing. Seeing it through the many twists and turns is another. Zurich North America's new Project Professionals Awards were created to recognize teams of employees who came together across functions to collaborate on a challenging project and successfully deliver positive impact, whether for customers, brokers, colleagues or all.

"Zurich's Project Professionals Awards recognize teams and individuals who have developed and executed an approach to project management that leads to extraordinary results," said Mark Knipfer, Chief Operations & Technology Officer for Zurich North America. "These awards are part of our culture of employee recognition and our desire to be 'simply better.'"

Winners of the inaugural awards include the following:

* George Underwood, Tim Leier and Stephen Di Cicco for a crop claims project using drones to help assess losses from wind, hail and other weather events.

* David Dodson, Lisa Dodson, Eileen Neugebauer and Ewa Peczkowicz for a project to simplify self-service claims functions for auto dealerships, through the Zurich Maintenance Automated Claims (Z-MAC) tool.

* Theresa Softcheck, Kate Dehne and Tijuana Willis for a project to enhance a digital platform for our USCI Construction customers.

* Willis also earned the overall Project Manager of the Year award.

Willis said a key to the success of the project were daily standup meetings to discuss completed and in-progress tasks from the prior day and address challenges and concerns. The highlight of the project, she added, was the people involved, including customers.

"Working directly with our customers to get their input and feedback has been a great experience," Willis said. "And everyone on our team was passionate about building a great product for them."

Zurich's Project Professionals Awards recognize that passion and collaboration power our efforts to innovate, simplify and put customers first. Project Professionals Award winners received 500 points in their employee recognition account, which they can redeem for gift cards, event tickets and other options.