A Strategic Plan review requires us to step back and look at our remit with fresh eyes.  Australia’s energy system is changing.  Our industry has expanded its focus beyond oil and gas exploration and development to cover lower-carbon fuels and net zero technologies. Our new 2024-2026 Strategic Plan responds to these changing needs and contains a vision for our industry that will guide our future actions. 

While some things are changing, some things remain the same.

As our industry continues to evolve, our Guiding Principles and Our Commitments remain unchanged from those upon which we were established.  These principles are shared, individually and collectively, by all our member companies, members of our Safety Leaders Group, our Working Groups, and our Support Team staff.

We remain resolute in Our Commitment: “Together we seek to prevent harm to our frontline workers by simplifying, standardising and sharing”.

Being healthy and safe means being free from physical and psychological harm.  A safe and healthy workplace benefits everyone - frontline workers, our assets, the environment, and the communities in which we operate.

How we prevent harm to our frontline workers:

  1. Simplify and standardise: We develop and adopt common industry solutions. We support our members to implement these solutions.  We monitor deployment and effectiveness. We seek to reduce complexity and duplication for our frontline workforce.
  2. Share: We share and learn to prevent future incidents.  We freely share safety innovations and best practice with our peers.  We cooperate on safety - with a clear common goal.

When preparing our 2024-2026 Strategic Plan, we consulted widely about what the future might hold for the industry that we serve.  Responses returned common themes:

  • Skills
  • Ageing assets
  • Energy transition
  • Psychological safety and psychosocial risks
  • Technology
  • National footprint

Our 2024-2026 Areas of Focus:  To prevent harm to frontline workers we are guided by risk, and have agreed to focus on:

  • Major Accident Events – primarily we will focus on preventing Loss of Containment.
  • Fatalities – primarily we will focus on preventing Line of Fire incidents.
  • Health and Wellbeing – we will focus on creating psychologically safe workplaces.  We will also help our Industry to recognise, and respond to, psychosocial risks.
  • Land Transport – in Queensland we will focus on preventing Significant Motor Vehicle Incidents.

To prevent harm we will simplify, standardise, and share in the following focus areas:

  • Workforce engagement – involving the workforce in the conversation.
  • Deployment – using what we have already built.
  • Workplace Culture – embrace Human and Organisational Performance.
  • Worker Competence – enhance the capability of frontline workers.
  • Frontline Leadership – upskill frontline leaders (Supervisors and Health Safety Environment Representatives).
  • Safe Systems of Work – promote sharing of systems for managing routine and non-routine hazardous work.
  • Share Learning and Best Practice – share lessons from incidents and near misses and share innovations and best practice.

Consistent with these focus areas, the Western Australia/Northern Territory Safety Leaders Group (SLG) have agreed upon the following High Priority Programs and Projects:

  • Safety Culture Framework & Toolkit
  • Industry Safety Induction
  • Common Industry Competencies
  • Frontline Leadership Training
  • Frontline HSER Engagement
  • Assist and Assure
  • Learning Event Bulletins
  • Psychosocial Hazards

The Queensland SLG has agreed to focus upon the following High Priority Programs and Projects:

  • Safety Culture Framework and Toolkit
  • Industry Safety Induction
  • Common Industry Competencies
  • Frontline Leadership Training
  • Assist and Assure
  • Learning Event Bulletins
  • Psychosocial Hazards
  • Engage and Embed
  • Vehicle Specifications (Heavy Vehicle, Light Vehicle, and IVMS)
  • Fitness to Work Medical Assessment
  • Line of Fire

Safer Together plays an important role in defining how we move our industry forward.  Active collaboration and participation by all companies working in our industry will be key to building a community of safety leaders, that together create a safer Australian Energy Production Industry.

We are Stronger and Safer Together.