We strive to achieve process safety excellence and work continually to reduce the likelihood and potential severity of process safety events.

This involves applying best practices in the design, use and maintenance of our equipment and planning every stage of our operations with safety risks and the hierarchy of control in mind.

Our approach

We base our process safety requirements on industry best practice including the Framework for Process Safety Management developed by the Energy Institute, and implement them through our business management system (BMS).

Our process safety commitments and requirements are set out in our Corporate Major Accident Prevention Policy. We report and investigate all process safety events and identify ways to prevent recurrence, in line with the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (IOGP) Tier 1 and Tier 2 definitions. Our goal is to achieve process safety excellence across all our operations.

Looking ahead

We will continue to emphasise process safety and major accident prevention including:

  • Progress our process safety culture and application of risk management systems.
  • Continue our major accident hazards awareness programme for both onshore and offshore personnel.
Field verifications

Harbour has adopted field verification as a key supervisory assurance process, focused on high-risk work activities. A field verification has greater depth than a permit audit and involves the review of procedures and documentation associated with an activity, followed by an open discussion with the work party about the activity, including planning and execution.

Each field verification is linked to Life Saving Rules and Process Safety Fundamentals. We expect all our onshore leaders to carry out field verifications during offshore visits. The process has been embedded in our North Sea business and work is underway to develop electronic field verification data analytics to improve leading safety indicators. We have now rolled out field verification procedures and guidance internationally.

Process safety fundamentals

We continued to embed our process safety fundamentals, which contain key actions to reduce high severity events, into our procedures. We conducted site-based and virtual reality training as part of our major accident hazards awareness programme. In 2024, 272 UK-based employees attended site-based major accident hazards training.