Health and Safety

In 2023, the combined Lost Time Injury Rate (LTIR) for OMV employees and contractors was 0.87 (2022: 0.78), and our combined Total Recordable Injury Rate (TRIR) was 1.37 (2022: 1.23). Regrettably, one of our contractor employees in Romania lost their life in 2023 while working for OMV. The contractor colleague in Romania died from injuries sustained during a fire.

The business segment Chemicals & Materials reached a TRIR of 3.98 (2022: 2.85). The main contributors to this high TRIR are the growth project in Kallo with 28 total recordable injuries (TRI), Stenungsund with 7 TRI, and Porvoo with 9 TRI, the latter two both having had turnarounds this year. All incidents had low actual and potential consequences but became a trigger to roll out the “B-Safe” program, which involved 4,120 people taking part in training. This training is based on behavioral safety and safety leadership, with a three-day course for all leaders including top management and a one-day session for all other employees. A strong focus was on safety culture and risk awareness, and taking care of each other. Special attention was paid to contractor HSSE management and learning from past incidents so as to prevent recurrences and embed appropriate improvement measures. In 2024, we will continue, embed, and sustain the B-Safe program. In order to improve safety culture, every location has selected focus areas based on B-Safe participants’ feedback. In addition, using lessons learned from previous acquisitions, we have strengthened our approach to integrating newly acquired facilities by establishing a strong HSSE foundation from the start, combined with a two-year integration plan. Locations identified with lower safety performance based on trends have also established a specific “get well” plan on top of their B-Safe improvement plan to address specific local challenges, led and sponsored by Borealis’ top leaders. Our focus on the prevention of serious injuries and fatalities continues, including a Group-wide approach for working at height, rolled out as a result of the findings from the tragic incident in Grandpuits in 2022. Borealis has also developed a standard task risk assessment process and global confined space procedure to standardize minimum expectations when conducting this high-risk activity. 2023 was an excellent year in process safety with only four leaks of primary containments (LOPC), without consequence for people and assets. Every LOPC is one too many, so we will continue to build on our process safety journey focusing on leading indicators, Tier 3 and Tier 4 events, and particularly on corrosion under insulation, which poses a major challenge in aging facilities.

The HSSE performance of Fuels & Feedstock in 2023 was overshadowed by a tragic fatal work accident involving a contractor employee in Romania, as mentioned above. Significant effort was put into safety campaigns and risk awareness and prevention programs in order to establish a strong and positive safety culture. This was especially the case during the planned maintenance turnarounds that took place in the Petrobrazi and Schwechat refineries. The Fuels & Feedstock TRIR came in at 0.78, slightly improved compared with the previous year (2022: 0.82). Special emphasis was placed on findings and lessons learned from previous incidents, leadership engagement, and improved contractor management. The consistent implementation of the process safety road maps drives further process excellence.

The Energy division had a TRIR of 0.95, which was better than last year’s performance (2022 TRIR: 1.09). Under the motto “back2basics,” dedicated campaigns to increase management presence and visibility of operational sites were implemented in most of our locations in 2023. The reduction of incident frequency and severity shows that constant effort on management level in combination with cross-functional collaboration on sites are the key to maximizing performance. In addition, we encountered 18 High Potential Incidents (HiPo). Learning from these is very important and can prevent serious or fatal injuries. That is why all HiPo incidents were subjected to thorough incident investigations and measures were taken to prevent recurrence.

Process Safety and Contractor Management will remain top priorities in 2024 and we will continue our efforts to improve performance. We also commit to training all operational personnel (employees and contractors) in applying the Life-Saving Rules by creating dedicated Safety Centers. Our Life-Saving Rules are in line with the IOGP and the industry and must be complied with under all circumstances.

The health and well-being of employees are fundamental to the success of any company, as they serve as a foundation for ensuring employee productivity. OMV continued its long tradition of offering health and prevention programs, such as cardiovascular disease prevention programs, ultrasound checks and other voluntary health checks, vaccinations (especially against flu and in some countries COVID–19), and virtual health hours, such as ideas for a healthy work-life balance or first aid measures that go far beyond legal requirements.

Also in 2023, great effort went into important safety-related activities to reduce risks and reverse the negative trend we see in OMV as a lingering effect of the COVID–19 pandemic and a clear increase in industry activity with a shortage of qualified personnel exacerbated by the geopolitical situation:

• We have rolled out our harmonized Life-Saving Rules (LSR) across the OMV Group. This simple set of rules helps prevent fatal and severe accidents and applies to all employees and contractors. During an intensive campaign with face-to-face workshops led by line management, all employees and contractor employees were trained. Furthermore, the LSR were presented and discussed regularly during awareness programs, workshops, management walk-arounds, and safety walks, as well as during various meetings. Practical LSR trainings will be continued and delivered systematically in the Safety Centers, for which the training concept and material have been fully reviewed and updated. Based on this, existing Safety Centers will be redeveloped, and new ones created in 2024.
• All incidents at level 3 and higher plus HiPos were investigated, and lessons learned were communicated throughout the organization. Improvement initiatives were developed and closely monitored using our HSSE reporting tool.
• To improve the incident investigation process and ensure that the new incident investigators get the right support, we launched an “Incident Investigators Community of Practice Experience Sharing” session across the whole OMV Group in 2023. This will be continued in 2024 on a regular basis.
• In 2023, action close out focus audits were performed to ensure the continuous improvement process. The specific objectives were to audit the close out of actions resulting from incident investigations and to audit the sharing within the organization and with contractors of (technical/safety) alerts and lessons learned.
• Contractor HSSE management is key to the OMV Group’s safety performance. We continued the training for beneficiaries and functional experts through e-learning sessions and webinars, and we updated the internal regulations framework based on practical experience. We also held strategic supplier meetings with prime contractors to share information, experiences, and expectations. A new quarterly experience exchange forum was established to support the business across the OMV Group with information and best practice sharing related to supplier and contractor management.
• Global HSSE training for employees and managers was delivered in the form of face-to-face training sessions, and a basic course was also offered as an e-learning course consisting of 13 modules, available in English, German, and Romanian.
• The leading process safety performance indicators (PSPI) were updated for the OMV Group, and a dashboard was developed for management information.
• Periodic Group Process Safety Committee meetings with Executive Board member involvement took place, during which process safety performance, achievements, and challenges were on the agenda.
• A register containing risk reduction measures identified in various process hazard analyses (PHAs), assessments, and safety studies was established in each operated production unit and was populated with data, which also included Borealis sites.
• A cloud-based software tool for process hazard analyses, recommendation tracking, and workflows was rolled out at OMV.
• We supported and followed up on the implementation of process safety road maps across OMV’s ventures, assets, and refineries. In our Integrated Risk Register, we continued to analyze and prioritize process safety risks to ensure that investments effectively lead to a significant reduction in risks.
• The Group-wide process safety knowledge- and experience-sharing platform was continued, with quarterly half-day events where up to 200 individuals participate in virtual meetings and presentations, including contributions from senior management.
• The OMV Group HSSE reporting tool was further developed. This is a key step in our ongoing harmonization and enables us to report in one single system across the OMV Group.