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Safety and health

Safety and health are of paramount importance at Petrofac. Our aim is for zero safety incidents. We see this as an entirely realistic and achievable goal and are proud to say that, much of the time, we do live up to it.

“At Petrofac, people come first and the wellbeing and safety of our employees, and everyone we work with is at the heart of our business.”
Tareq Kawash Group Chief Executive

Our people care. They are obligated and empowered to intervene and stop the work whenever they observe an unsafe situation. They understand that safety is everyone's responsibility.

Our HSE strategy is centred on 5 pillars:

  • Leadership: the shadow you cast
  • Employee engagement: greater engagement, fewer incidents
  • Contractor management: consistency and performance driven
  • Training: formalise, simplify, and standardise, with a refreshed learner experience
  • Compliance: do it right, first time

These pillars define our future actions and initiatives and position us as the partner of choice for our customers.

The major themes of the strategy include:

  • Data-2-Decisions – using data and analytics from key leading and lagging indicators to define areas of focus and reduce incidents
  • Technology enabled – extensive use of mobile technology to increase situational awareness
  • Engagement and communication – engaging, insightful, focused and even fun
  • Proactive vs. reactive – observations and interventions before an incident occurs
  • Accountability – the joint ownership of HSE performance by line management and the HSE function
LTI RATE (2022)

0.018

Lost time injury (LTI) frequency rate per 200,000 man-hours, compared to an industry average of 0.048

INCIDENT FREQ. RATE (2022)

0.094

Recordable incident frequency rate 0.094 per 200,000 man-hours, compared to an industry average of 0.184

OUR GOAL

0

We are committed to a future where we have zero safety incidents

Zero is the only acceptable number

In line with our internal safety campaign - Horizon Zero - there is no other number we would tolerate.

Horizon Zero encourages each employee, and those we work alongside, to:

  • Recognise hazards and reduce risk by identifying, understanding and dealing with them
  • Take personal ownership for safety by demonstrating personal commitment and competence throughout the organisation
  • Assure asset integrity by maintaining assets in a safe, reliable and efficient condition

We will achieve these objectives through leadership, communication, and co-operation.

Safety

Life-Saving Rules

Everyone at Petrofac must follow nine Life-Saving Rules. These rules set out our minimum expectations to control the risk of serious injury from common activities.

Nurturing a healthy working environment

We are dedicated to our people’s wellbeing and are delivering initiatives and campaigns that cover both physical and mental health. Check out some of the activities below to get a glimpse of how we are prioritising mental health and wellbeing.

#WellbeingWednesday programme

Our Company Doctor runs an online programme for all employees. From eating healthy during major holidays, to positive mental health practices and breast cancer awareness, supported by guest speakers and colleagues with first-hand experience.

Know Your Numbers 

This awareness-raising campaign encouraged employees to prioritise their health and well-being by monitoring four important health metrics: BMI, cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar. It aimed to empower everyone to make informed decisions about health. For one of our colleagues, it was probably a life saver. Find out why here.

Onsite health checks 

A campaign was launched to ensure that all our onsite employees have a regular medical examination. Everyone is encouraged to participate in exercises and fitness sessions, such as yoga and cycling.

Mental Health First Aiders

After successfully piloting our approach in the UK, we have rolled out the initiative in the UAE and India, and currently have more than 90 trained Mental Health First Aiders, available to help Petrofac employees with any mental health issues.

Employee Assistance Programme

Our global Employee Assistance Programme is a confidential support service that can help our people and their dependents solve a wide range of problems and challenges. The programme is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Focus on stress management

We are focused on delivering initiatives that help our people manage and reduce stress. These include in-person and online activities across our offices and projects, including:

  • Stress management classes in the UK, Malaysia, Oman, Thailand, and other locations
  • Mental health webinars highlighting stress management
  • Yoga, pilates, fitness, meditation, and gym sessions aimed at reducing stress
  • Our managers and supervisors in the UK have been through mental health awareness training which includes stress management

Using gamification to advance our health

In early 2023 our HSE team challenged everyone at Petrofac to walk or run 10,000 to 15,000 steps every day, to kick start the year. Nearly 10% of our global workforce signed up for the Global Steps Challenge, resulting in the remarkable numbers you can find below. Those completing their daily and weekly targets were entered into a weekly draw with a chance to win health and fitness related awards.

Steps

148

million

Walked, ran, and hiked

106,000

kilometres

Teams created

168

Steps by the winning team

2.7

million

Strengthening our safety culture

Every year we strive to enhance our programme of health, safety, and environment (HSE) measures. We also continue to refine the way we measure our performance.

Some of our health and safety initiatives include:

HSE Deep Dives

Regular sessions with senior leaders to identify and address any potential barriers to safe and healthy working.

Life Saving Rules e-learning

A mandatory e-learning course for all Petrofac employees, incorporating videos in English, Hindi, Russian, and Arabic.

Hazard Hunt process

These include regular ‘cold eye’ reviews, whereby workers from one area perform a hazard hunt of another area, to identify hazards that others might miss after seeing them every day.

Virtual audits

More formal use of virtual tools to conduct HSE audits and Petrofac Assurance Index audits.

Behavioural-based training

A number of training programmes, including our HSE Bootcamp for supervisors and mental health awareness modules.

Employing digital for a safer work environment

In line with our wider digital transformation programmes, new technologies are playing an ever more prominent role in our HSE activities.

To ensure that our people are proactively and routinely engaged in health and safety, we introduced a number of digital and mobile tools. These include:

  • HSE dashboards – all employees are given access, via their mobile phones, to real-time safety performance, which is available at the project, country, and business unit level. This helps us to raise awareness of our safety performance, demonstrate that everyone at every level is accountable, and keep the entire organisation focused on improving performance.
  • HSE observation reporting tool – a mobile app, available to all employees, enabling them to report any safety observations, both good and bad, via their mobile phones. In 2022, we saw a 470% increase in the reporting of safety observations, with more than 140,000 observations reported. This new app helps us to keep employees engaged, as well as providing useful insights and leading indicators of potential issues.
  • HSE social networking – we use the Yammer platform to host an HSE social networking dialogue, which involves everyone in the HSE team and is open to anyone in the Company. With more than 350 active members, this is the second most active Yammer group in Petrofac.
  • Driving improvement app – we replaced many of our in-vehicle monitoring systems with a mobile app, available to all employees. As well as keeping track of their driving behaviour, allocating a score, and providing personalised road safety advice, it enables everyone to see how their driving performance compares to their colleagues.

Security and crisis management

We work in some challenging environments with fast-changing security issues.

Our aim is to protect our employees, partners and assets in a responsible manner, and to prevent any security-related disruption to our operations. Our security and crisis management teams are closely integrated into the wider HSE community. Our Security and Crisis Management Policies set out the responsibilities of our senior management team and our business units.

Cyber-security and data protection

In response to rapidly evolving data security risks, and to support Petrofac’s wider digitalisation initiatives, we have a strong focus on cyber-security and data protection.

We re-evaluated our controls, particularly those related to our cloud-based platforms and applications, and continued to monitor and address any supply chain risks. Meanwhile, we continued to align our information security management practice with the ISO27001 standard and other best practices.

Related initiatives included:

  • Enhancing our internal awareness programmes, with particular attention on the risks posed by phishing and social engineering, drawing attention to the increased sophistication of such attacks, while also running simulation tests and enhancing our related controls
  • Continuing to enhance our threat detection and threat-hunting capabilities
  • Continuing the assessment of cyber-security risks with regular vulnerability assessments, penetration tests and Red Team exercises.

Cyber-security remains a key priority in all our digitalisation initiatives, and we ensure that appropriate security protection is embedded from the initial idea and conceptual phases.