Nothing is more important to us than the safety and wellbeing of our people. Safety is our number one goal and part of the culture of who we are and how we work. We are committed to zero fatalities and a zero harm work environment meaning that all of our employees and visitors return home safely every day. Our aim is to build and embed a sustainable safety culture based on three core principles:

Providing a safe working environment; Providing comprehensive implementation of plans built around best practice safety and compliance standards; Offering comprehensive training focused on risk awareness and reduction.

Our approach

Our working environments by their nature expose our employees and contractors to risk. This is why our objective is to identify those risks and implement controls. We constantly review and update our working practices and controls to ensure that they are the safest they can be. We believe having the right practices and controls in place to effectively manage those risks that have safety impacts leads to improved safety outcomes.

We have an established safety management framework that covers all aspects of safety compliance, monitoring, and training. Our safety management system is focused on ensuring compliance with our safety standards to provide a safe work environment. It is built on:

Critical minimum safety standards which are aligned with industry best practices (Global Minimum Requirements). Regular safety audits that benchmark our facilities’ compliance in implementing our GMRs. Regular safety and risk awareness briefings and information updates for our staff and contractors. Regular health and safety training for line management and employees. Regular training sessions covering general safety issues. Specialised training programmes for employees that need it, for instance, for those involved in handling hazardous materials. Regular monitoring of the health and wellbeing of our employees aimed at improving and maintaining their wellbeing and reducing the incidence of occupational illnesses.

Governance

We continually look to improve our safety culture, and key to this is improving leadership, as well as monitoring and simplifying our safety systems. The Board has overall responsibility for health and safety at the Group, including setting policy, agreeing safety standards and reviewing performance. The Chief Operating Officer is the top-manager responsible for Global Ports’s health and safety compliance and performance monitoring.

The Chief Operating Officer regularly reviews commentary and performance reports supplied by the individual business units and the Board receives quarterly performance reports.

Regular reviews of the Group’s safety performance are conducted by the Board, with the resulting actions discussed and agreed with the executive team.

Performance in 2019

In 2019, we continued our efforts to safeguard the health and safety of our employees. We focused on continuing to provide strong visible leadership, to drive compliance, tighten our risk controls and improve communication. The Board conducted a thorough review of our safety management systems and risk controls and processes in order to reduce the overall risk profile of the Group.

LTIFR

We use the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) to measure our safety performance. It is pleasing to report that, despite the introduction of new services for example at ULCT, our LTIFR performance was the lowest on record at 0.55 (2018: 1.28). Sadly, however, we had a fatal incident at our PLP terminal early in the year, which underlines the critical importance of always safeguarding our people and providing the safest possible working conditions. Safety continues to be a core value for the Group and a focus for the Board as we redouble our efforts to achieve a zero-harm environment.