VINCI’s managers bear the primary responsibility for instilling and promoting the Group’s safety culture. This responsibility is shared among the different levels of management in its business lines, divisions and companies. Dedicated occupational health and safety departments and a worldwide network of more than 2,500 employees in health and safety roles support managers in spreading the safety culture. They work together to implement an occupational risk prevention management system that complies with VINCI’s requirements and reflects the realities of their entity or project.
At Group level, health and safety policy is supervised by the Health and Safety Coordination unit, under the authority of the VINCI Executive Committee. The Coordination unit is chaired by a member of the Executive Committee and made up of the health and safety directors of the Group’s business lines and divisions. Its mission is to build a common safety culture, mainly by facilitating the sharing of best practices and feedback among business lines, assessing existing procedures, delivering reliable indicators and driving improvements. For example, it has launched initiatives across business lines enabling them to reduce risks associated with the lifting and moving of heavy objects, electrocution risk and road accidents caused by third parties.
The Health and Safety Coordination unit meets regularly with the Executive Committee to debrief and discuss accidents and significant events. It also convenes to assess the sector’s human resources needs and promote mobility.
In addition, the unit launches foresight approaches to address emerging business risks and takes action to develop innovation in health and safety.
Leonard, VINCI’s innovation and foresight platform, has coordinated a mission to foster innovation in safety and prevention. It applied an approach divided into three parts:
Different innovative solutions have been identified and are now being tested; several of these show promise. One example is the “Lifeguard” safety system, which detects the presence of pedestrians near machinery. The system captures images with video cameras and uses artificial intelligence to analyse them, instantly detecting when pedestrians are in the vicinity.
Leonard is continuing this mission, which will encompass environmental foresight approaches that have an impact on employees’ health and safety at work. The “Catalyst” component will also be expanded to include health innovations.
Business lines and divisions structure their activities to enable the development of a common language and tools, which they use to monitor actions and results; reliably collect feedback, share information and issue alerts; and analyse trends in their business activities so they can enhance their risk prevention. Each business line has a coordinating body to help cascade information throughout the organisation. For example, the health and safety directors of VINCI Autoroutes and VINCI Energies hold a coordination meeting every quarter. At VINCI Construction, the coordination team meets monthly. The head office of VINCI Concessions produces a monthly report of health and safety data from all entities, including those that are not fully consolidated and their subcontractors. The international network of health and safety experts ensures that the safety culture spreads across borders, sharing best practices developed in various countries and ensuring that rules and tools are understood and applied by all. The health and safety departments at the head offices of business lines and divisions facilitate safety audits across their organisation and help to integrate new companies.
A targeted approach, based on the business activity and country, has always been fundamental in identifying and preventing risks to people’s health and safety. Each business line and division maps its major risks based on its operational experience so that it can take preventive measures that are best suited to its business activities and local context.
A health and safety risk analysis is conducted ahead of any work situation. It takes into account the work environment, the characteristics of the project under consideration and its specific technical requirements. These multiple layers of analysis are needed to develop a response that is tailored to the operational issues of each project, business activity and country.
The Institute for an Industrial Safety Culture (ICSI) assisted VINCI in 2018 in mapping major risks at Group level. ICSI interviewed the health and safety directors of VINCI business lines and divisions over several months to identify the major risks that the Group’s activities have in common and to assess the tools used to manage these risks. The Health and Safety Coordination unit reviews and updates this risk map every year.
The risk mapping identified eight major risk categories and their associated types of potentially major events. A major risk is defined as the actual or potential risk that a major event occurs and has severe consequences for a subject (employee, temporary worker, subcontractor or third party). Severity level is determined based on situations and events that have actually occurred as well as those that were potentially serious, meaning that in slightly different circumstances, the consequences could have been major.
