Vivo Energy Aims to Improve HSSE Performance

• STAFF REPORTER Vivo Energy, the market-leading company that distributes and markets Shell branded fuels and lubricants in Africa, held its annual Safety Day on Thursday, 15 November.

Safety Day is an opportunity for all parties at Vivo Energy to refocus on the importance of Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE).

The theme of this year’s Safety Day was ‘from good to great’. Vivo Energy invited employees, contractors and partners to think about ways of improving safety performance and culture across the entire business, with special attention on their HSSE focus areas of road safety, contractor safety, process safety and security.

The company’s ultimate ambition is to achieve a world-class safety culture, where HSSE is fully integrated into the ways of working for all parties at Vivo Energy.

Their commitment to achieving and maintaining the highest international HSSE standards is at the heart of their business and in 2017, the company delivered an extremely strong safety performance, with a total recordable case frequency of 0,097.

Events were held across the company to ensure offices, depots, sites and service stations operate even more safely in 2019. All employees were invited to share their ideas to improve safety across the business, with the best suggestions being shortlisted to be implemented in 2019.

James Ngethi, head of HSSE at Vivo Energy, said: “Safety is an absolute priority for our business, our colleagues and our contractors.

Ultimately, we want to achieve ‘Goal Zero’, which means no harm to people or the environment”.

Ngethi added that Vivo Energy has a very strong safety record, but they can always do more.

In 2016 and 2017, Safety Day focused on embedding the importance of potential incident reporting across the organisation, so that issues are prevented from happening as opposed to being fixed after they have occurred.

Vivo Energy successfully adopted a proactive culture of safety with more potential incidents being reported and closed. “This year, we want employees to develop their own thoughts and ideas on what’s needed to improve our HSSE performance even further in the future, empowering our teams and reminding them that safety is the responsibility of all.”

Addressing employees, managing director Johan Grobbelaar said in 2015 the company reported 230 PIs and this increased to over

1 000 PIs in 2017. “This means that we were changing employee safety culture which in the end brought us to where we are today.”

Grobbelaar further stated that as they look back on their performance, they are challenged to further improve their HSSE culture to make sure that they continue to operate safely and maintain the reputation of the Shell brand.

“This year, our HSSE score card is green, and we couldn’t have done that without you.”

As part of the company’s build-up to Safety Day, Vivo Energy Namibia validated its tyre tread check card initiative by testing the card at two retail sites as well as on staff vehicles. The tyre tread check card is used to measure tyre depth. This contributes to road user tyre safety awareness and aims to reduce the overall number of vehicle accidents.