Health & Safety Policy

Although our assets are spread across 9 countries and cultures, VTTI operates to a single HSE policy with the non-negotiable dictum: “All accidents can be avoided.”

More specifically, we require every VTTI terminal to apply principles which run through the DNA of the business:

  • Aim for Zero accidents and incidents. This is our goal throughout the whole VTTI network.
  • 100% compliance. We will meet every requirement demanded by the law, and our industry
  • Observe minimum standards. We have set them, and we stick to them.
  • Deploy a quality management system to ensure the same, safe working methods are used throughout VTTI
  • Learn from experience, with an incident analysis tool readily available to be shared by all
  • Provide necessary training and support so that every terminal is operated by highly qualified professionals
  • Invest in our terminals to reduce risks to our people and the environment
  • Drive home a clear message: the company is only as safe as the people who work here
  • Ensure our people are part of a well developed safety culture, and therefore determined to drive HSE in everything we do.

In turn, this requires:

  • A structured management system developed centrally, but locally adapted to recognise individual cultures and conditions
  • Sharing risk-based thinking, with a basic central focus: “What could go wrong?”
  • Winning hearts and minds, and building safety skills and competences
  • Providing the means, from safe and well-maintained tools to industry-standard personal protection equipment
  • Measuring, assessing and always driving for even better performance.

VTTI is working with partner Nidogas to construct a major new LPG storage facility in Lagos, Nigeria.

Lars Pantzlaff, Managing Director, comments: “Nigeria is not a country with a fully developed safety culture, and the international standards we work to exceed practices found on the ground despite comprehensive legislation. One very effective practice we have introduced is our morning ‘Toolbox Meeting’. Before work starts, we discuss any potential hazards and share experiences and concerns. Safety Supervisors are also sent to high risk areas and we carry out regular inspections to check for compliance. We have instilled a culture that workers are their ‘neighbour’s keeper’, alerting each other to dangers and unsafe practices. There is also a good culture of reporting accidents and near-misses.”

The site slogan - “safety, first and always” – escapes nobody. It is written large at the site entrance, and is even chanted in Toolbox meetings and in greeting each other. A board also updates workers on safety statistics, and they make good reading. For example, ‘Observed Unsafe Acts’ have been reduced by 90% and the ‘Total Recordable Incident Rate’ has fallen from 3.35 to 2.3, well below the target of 3.00.

 

View Lagos project details