These foundational rules apply to everyone, at every operating site or worksite at which VINCI companies oversee operations, and across all businesses, all companies and all countries where the Group operates. In compliance with the global framework, each business line adapts and implements its health and safety policy to closely address local challenges.
VINCI’s managers bear the primary responsibility for instilling and promoting the Group’s culture of health and safety. 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 2,850 employees in health and safety roles support managers in spreading this 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. A number of training resources have been created for managers. “Safety by VINCI” was launched in 2023 for senior health and safety managers across the Group, supplementing the many training programmes delivered in business lines and divisions.
At Group level, the health and safety policy is supervised by the Health and Safety Coordination unit, under the authority of VINCI’s Executive Committee and led by one of its members. It is made up of the health and safety directors of the Group’s business lines and divisions. Its mission is to build a common and interdependent safety culture, mainly by facilitating the sharing of best practices and experiences 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, such as those associated with the lifting and moving of heavy loads, electrical risks and road traffic collisions with third parties. The Health and Safety Coordination unit also assesses the sector’s human resources needs and promotes mobility.
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 on innovation in safety and prevention. It applies an approach divided into three parts:
Different innovative solutions have been identified and are now being tested, many of which are promising.
Leonard is extending its mission to include foresight relating to environmental issues that impact employee health and safety. In addition, the Catalyst component has been 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; as well as analyse trends in their business activities so they can enhance their risk prevention. Each business line has a coordinating body to help pass on 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 on health and safety data from all entities, including those that are not fully consolidated. 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.
Working closely on the ground, accident prevention Pivot Clubs and internal collaboration platforms help disseminate and monitor health and safety measures for the community of H&S coordinators and experts. Local initiatives are launched by these clubs and, if conclusive, are rolled out more widely within their scope of application. This was the case for the Trajeo’h programme, which set up delegations and structures to cover all of France, and more recently with the responsible driving training plan, whose rollout in 2023 met with considerable success.
At the highest level, the Health and Safety Task Force meets regularly with the Executive Committee to debrief and discuss accidents and significant events. Reporting is organised collectively to better disseminate the lessons learned and prevent accidents from reoccurring. Information on each accident is shared with the European Works Council.
A targeted approach, based on the business activity and country, has always been fundamental in identifying and preventing risks to human health and safety. Each business line and division maps out 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 Group’s major risk map is updated annually, based on significant events observed over the previous five years. This update enables the detection of trends and is presented to the Health and Safety Task Force for discussion. Eight major risk categories, and the types of events associated with such risks, have been identified. A major risk signifies the probability that a major event will occur and cause severe consequences for someone, who may be an employee, a temporary worker, a subcontractor or a 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.
