SAFETY

At Ovintiv, we lead with safety. It is a foundational value and drives decision-making across the organization. We want every person who steps foot on our site to leave in the same condition they arrived. We take a “safe work always” approach that is rooted in the belief that all injuries and incidents are preventable.   

We work to improve our safety performance every day. Ensuring the safety of our staff, suppliers, the public and surrounding communities is core to how we manage our operations. If something can’t be done safely, then it shouldn’t be done on an Ovintiv site. Each year, the Board of Directors, led by the EH&S Committee and members of the senior operational team, participates in a field tour of our operations to see first-hand advances in safety and emissions improvements. 

We lead with safety

We take a “safe work always” approach that is rooted in the belief that all injuries and incidents are preventable.

Acting with Urgency

2022 was a challenging year for safety in our industry and we were not immune. We saw the frequency of serious safety incidents increase across our operations. Tragically, two service providers were fatally injured on our worksites. 

In response to these incidents, we have taken decisive action to further challenge ourselves and our approach with the goal of making a sustained improvement in our safety performance. Company-wide safety stand-downs were held in both field offices and corporate offices. We also undertook an extensive, company-wide review of our safety practices by an internal Safety Advisory Task Force and commissioned an independent review conducted by a third party, both of which reported directly to our executive leadership team and Board of Directors.

Through these reviews, immediate steps were taken, and four strategic actions emerged:

Start Work Safely Authorization

Our worksites are complex and dynamic. The start work safe authorization process is designed to help ensure everyone involved in a job understands their scope of work, the hazards associated with that scope and the procedures in place to make sure the job is executed safely. 

 Integrate Safety into Commercial Processes

We want to partner with service providers whose safety culture aligns with ours. We are continually working to build clear systems and processes that ensure safety considerations are integrated into service provider selection, onboarding and performance management. Our service providers are critical to our operations, and we prioritize their safety.

Safety Leadership Development

Everyone is a safety leader, no matter their role. We have developed a comprehensive safety competency development program tailored to employees’ roles and custom-built to the type of safe decision making that is necessary for their work. Safety leadership is learned and we are committed to providing safety leadership competency development to all staff.

Embed One Safety Culture

We have a deep-rooted safety culture at Ovintiv. Our executive leadership remains committed to reaffirming, reinvigorating, and reinforcing this culture, driving consistency through all of our areas of operation and teams.  Our people are united in upholding one company-wide safety standard.

Lifesaving
Rules

We continue to reinforce the importance of adhering to the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP)’s lifesaving rules in our operations. They provide clear guidelines for making safe decisions in a variety of operational situations. The underlying foundation of our life saving rules is “stop work,” which gives every employee or contractor the authority to stop operations if a lifesaving rule is compromised. There is no retaliation for exercising Stop Work Authority.

Lifesaving rules

Creating a Speak Up Culture

Increasing employee, contractor and suppliers’ safety awareness is only part of the solution for maintaining a safe workplace; we are also committed to enhancing psychological safety. This means continuing to build a trusting and open environment where our people feel able to proactively identify and elevate safety risks, free from judgment or negative consequences. 

We are working to build a culture that puts safety above all else – where our people feel empowered to ask questions, reach out for help, check in with colleagues and stop work when necessary.   

Ways to
speak-up:

  • Identify a problem
  • Share new ideas
  • Recognize hazards with co-workers
  • Stop the job when it’s unsafe to continue working
  • Ask for help

Prioritizing Process Safety

We are responsible for creating sites where our employees can perform their work without health hazards. Our occupational health and industrial hygiene initiative is a specialized component of our overall operational management system, focused on eliminating potential health hazards found in the workplace. This initiative predicts and monitors potential workplace chemical exposure, evaluates exposure risk and suggests control of environmental factors that may cause sickness. Through this program, our employees may adopt different procedures or increase their personal protective equipment for their safety when needed.

Incidents associated with the failure of process equipment or mechanical integrity can result in critical impacts to worker safety and the environment. To mitigate these risks, we have implemented a set of comprehensive process safety practices.

Our process safety standard focuses on the appropriate design, construction, operation and maintenance of facilities and equipment to prevent the release of hazardous materials. In addition to maintaining proper containment, we integrate process safety tools and techniques into our management system, continue to enhance our process safety practices and expectations and train our teams on preventing hazard exposure throughout our operational lifecycle.

Each year, we set a company goal tied to compensation to minimize our process safety event frequency. We reduce our number of process safety events—unexpected releases of hazardous materials or energy—through site assessments, employee training, integrity management programs and data tracking and analysis.

 

In 2022, Ovintiv achieved a process safety event frequency rate of 0.

Measuring Safety Performance

Strong safety performance reflects our commitment to protecting our employees, contractors, suppliers and the communities where we operate. Together, we strive for safe work always and look for new and innovative solutions to drive safety progress.

By setting environment, health and safety (EH&S) goals, we work toward continuous improvement. These goals are included in our annual company scorecard, which guides our compensation, rewarding strong company performance.  

If an incident does occur, we immediately work to correct the situation. We use an incident management system to capture data, including injuries and illness, motor vehicle incidents, spills and near misses, which helps us gain knowledge from these events. This data is analyzed by our safety specialists and operations teams to identify root causes and improve our practices. It is also used to manage EH&S audits and inspections.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​In 2021, Ovintiv’s Canadian Operations Facilities Engineering and Construction (FEC) team reached a significant three-year milestone of zero recordable safety incidents. Over the three-year period, the team executed a construction program that erected facilities for 338 wells, installed 239 miles of pipeline and constructed a large sour gas processing plant, the Pipestone Processing Facility. These projects totaled over six million exposure hours without a recordable injury. This is equivalent to 1,000 people, working full time, for three years.

Safety Scorecard and 2022 Performance

*Definition of process safety was broadened in 2021 to include additional events

Total Recordable Injury Frequency

Total Recordable Injury Frequency

Process Safety Event Frequency*

Process Safety Event Frequency

Motor Vehicle Incident Frequency

Motor Vehicle Incident Frequency

EH&S Strategy and Performance Management

We believe all injuries and incidents are preventable, which is why we focus every day on making our workplace free of recognized hazards.

Managing EH&S performance includes our commitment to a safety culture, environmental stewardship, protected and secure work sites and reliable regulatory performance. Critical to our success is employee development and integration with our area operating teams.

We support our commitments with programs and policies that set expectations and clearly identify governance. From our Board of Directors to employees on the frontlines of our operations, everyone plays an important role in our EH&S performance.

Improvement stems from measuring the effectiveness of our systems and standards. We utilize Ethos — an operations management system — to measure, track and understand our performance. Safety metrics are included in our annual company scorecard, which rewards strong safety performance.

By integrating Ethos standards and practices into our daily activities, we promote an injury-free workplace, minimize our environmental impact and treat our communities with respect.

Ethos is a documented set of standards that outline how we work. Within each of Ethos’ 12 standards are practices that define roles and responsibilities, performance measurements and necessary training for employees and service providers.

Ethos Guides Our:

  • Companywide policies and metrics
  • Standards, practices and team training program
  • Operational implementation of EH&S practices
  • Day-to-day field procedures
  • Individual knowledge of and active engagement with EH&S programs and procedures

Governed by:

  • Board and executive leadership team
  • Operational EH&S team
  • Operating area leadership
  • Corporate and field employees

Employee Training

Setting clear expectations for EH&S performance and educating our employees on potential hazards are key goals for our EH&S training program. Each year, our EH&S and operations teams work in partnership to develop individualized training plans so that employees receive EH&S training specific to their roles. Through this approach, we offer more than 120 courses to our workforce, guiding our team on the best methods for managing EH&S risks and the procedures they must follow to complete work safely.

We are proud of our Safety Essentials for Leaders program that emphasizes the importance of strong leadership around the protection and safety of our employees.

More than 3,000 employees, contractors and service providers have completed our Safety Essentials for Leaders program since its inception in 2009.

Motor vehicle incidents are the leading cause of injury and death in the oil and natural gas industry. Our comprehensive driver safety program includes training, tools and standards to encourage safe driving habits.

We require both driver awareness and hands-on driver training for all company fleet drivers and have established safe driving practices, including prohibiting the use of cell phones while driving. Additionally, we assign an in-vehicle monitoring system to all Ovintiv fleet vehicles. These devices provide data on driver behavior, including the frequency of hard braking, rapid acceleration and speed.

This data is gathered for risk analysis and to monitor our employees’ driving performance. If an employee shows consistent unsafe driving practices, he or she may have to participate in additional training or use additional tools to improve performance.

Driver Safety Program

  • Driving Distraction
  • Safe Vehicle Operations
  • In-Vehicle Monitoring System
  • Drive Safe Team
  • Driver Safety Training
  • Fleet Management
  • Commercial Motor Vehicle Regulatory Compliance Requirements
  • Motor Vehicle Incident Reporting
  • Driver Fitness and Alertness
  • Road Journey Management
  • Driver Qualification and Authorization
  • Driver Commitment

Pandemic Response

From the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we prioritized the physical and mental health of our employees and moved quickly to protect our team while continuing to provide safe, affordable, secure and reliable energy.

A successful pandemic response was a priority at every level, starting at the top of our organization. Our executive leadership team met regularly with our Pandemic Response Team (PRT) to discuss employee safety and business continuity. For the past three years, our Board has been actively engaged with our executives in providing oversight through this unprecedented situation.

The PRT officially stood down on October 1, 2022 after approximately 33 months of service to the organization, leaving in place a legacy of protocols aligned with local regulations and health agency recommendations.

While most of our operations and processes have returned to normal, pre-COVID-19 conditions, it is important that we continue to follow safe, health and wellness guidelines. Ovintiv will continue to use our employee guidance documents to assess and report illness, positive cases, and close contacts.