Personal safety

Zero accidents as a common goal of the Organisation.

We set safety performance goals throughout the different levels of the Organisation, to boost their integration as a priority in the day-to-day activities and as a condition for Galp’s sustainability objectives.

The management commitment and the responsibilities of the organisation’s hierarchical structure are expressed explicitly in our HSE Policy and our HSE Management System, safeguarding the integration of health and safety in the strategy and in the decisions that we take daily at our Company. We compare our performance and align our targets with the sector associations references and their best practices.

Risk assessment activities are ensured in all our operations to identify and manage the main safety risks. We raise our employees’ awareness to the importance of these activities.

Our operations have security management systems and are periodically subject to third party independent audits.

Learn more about our management systems.

We have HSE learning and training programmes, which promote the continuous improvement of performance and the dissemination of the best risk identification and management practices, fostering a change of behaviours and attitudes.
We ensure that our employees and partners are fit for their roles on a physical, mental and technical level.

We take the skills and the empowerment of our employees and partners as a basic condition for the fulfilment of our commitment and responsibility.
The selection and training of people based on a proper management of change is a basic principle that increases individual performance capacity and risk awareness concerning the activities to be carried out, thus contributing to the improvement of team performance.

Human factors in our activities

We believe that managing human factors helps make the workplace safer.

The importance of process design, equipment selection and health, safety and environment management systems in protecting people, the environment and assets is widely acknowledged.
However, the relevance of the causes associated with particular types of human failure has increasingly been assumed in the sector as part of the overall risk.

Benefits of incorporating human factors into HSE management

• Reduction of risks to people’s health and safety and to process safety;
• Reduction of potential occurrence of human failure and mitigation of its consequences;
• Improving operational efficiency.

We can achieve additional improvements in HSE performance by better understanding how individuals interact with all aspects of their workplace and the planning of their tasks.
It is fundamental to analyse the impact of the interaction of individuals with each other, as well as with the facilities, equipment and management systems within their local cultural context and environment.

Incorporating human factors into safety management has positive impacts on the safety of operations, in the protection of people, the environment, but it also has operational benefits, as it allows for lower exploration and maintenance costs.

We aim to raise the awareness of our employees and partners about the importance of human factors in achieving a better HSE performance and in creating a safer workplace.

As standards, we adopt the guidelines developed and published by IOGP and the Energy Institute.

Engagement with stakeholders and knowledge dissemination

Safety Forum dedicated to safety-related issues

On 14 March 2017, Galp organised the Safety Forum, dedicated to Safety-related issues, focusing on the impact of the human factor on safety matters.

In this Forum, we had the presence of international experts on the subject, who helped us revisit the human and organisational failures that were at the origin of some of the worst industrial accidents and showed us the most recent developments with regard to these issues in the Oil & Gas sector.

The event was attended by the internal staff that is responsible for ensuring the safety of operations, as well as by some of Galp’s partners and also representatives of companies in the Oil & Gas sector associated with IOGP – International Association of Oil and Gas Producers.

Following the Safety Forum, the IOGP Human Factors subcommittee met at Galp's premises and discussed several key issues, such as: human factors in barrier management, how to include the human factors issue in incident investigations and non-technical skills assessment processes.

Application of Safety Critical Task Analysis (SCTA) in the supply of the Autonomous Gas Unit (AGU)

A team consisting of the people in charge of LNG handling operations, local distribution network, G&P unit security and a human factors specialist applied the HTA (Hierarchical Task Analysis) technique in order to fully understand the complexity of the task, analysed potential failures that could exist and determined the control measures to be implemented.

As standards, we adopt the guidelines developed and published by IOGP and the Energy Institute.