At HSE KSA, taking place from 9-10 September in Riyadh, a panel discussion took place on safety leadership and high reliability organisations, emphasising the importance of leadership accountability in HSE.
Introducing the session and the main themes, moderator Muhammad Jawad Ali, director and board member of The Disrupt Labs commented, “Real leadership means real outcomes in HSE."
Accountability in practice
Simon Watson, chief HSSE officer, ACWA Power addressed the question of what accountability in HSE leadership means in practice, embedding accountability from the boardroom to the work site. He highlighted the importance of clarity in roles and responsibilities, from the board and CEO all the way through to the front line workforce, describing how ACWA Power had focused on the 10 most important safety tasks for each role, with KPIs created to measure performance. This approach is also adopted with its contractors and EPCs, with health and safety milestones and deliverables tied back to monthly milestone payments. These focus on the 10 most critical factors that are causing the most issues reputationally and from a safety outcome standpoint, including critical risk management performance and welfare and accommodation standards, with payments withheld for non-compliance.
Watson also suggested measures to ensure fairness and consistency in accountability conversations throughout the organisation.
Through its ‘Year of Accountability’, starting in 2025, the company had reset the bar, clarifying the company’s priorities and how they should be cascaded throughout its supply chain, he added.
Top-down versus bottom-up
Larry Wilson, CEO SafeStart highlighted the challenges of focusing solely on a top-down approach and relying on first-line supervisors to communicate safety messages effectively.
“If you’re going to have a positive and proactive safety culture it has to have some support from the bottom up,” he said, noting that first line supervisors may be stressed, overworked and may not necessarily have the right skill sets or communication skills.
Cultural differences in the Middle East were addressed, when it was pointed out that leadership tours can influence safety culture positively, and can become learning opportunities. Robert Munn, senior VP HSE, Sports Boulevard Foundation shared examples of leadership tours being reframed as engagement opportunities to build trust and accountability, for example when a leader follows up on a problem reported to them.
Discussing the blame culture and culture of fear still prevalent in the Middle East, he said, “Yes, we need to hold people accountable, but we don’t need to blame people. There’s a difference.” Building trust and creating a no-blame environment where people feel free to discuss issues openly takes time and does not happen overnight, he added.
Prioritising safety risks
Elaborating further on the question of which safety risks to prioritise and how leaders can ensure systematic issues don’t get overlooked, Watson highlighted ACWA Power’s focus on critical risk management and measuring the presence of its critical controls.
“Risk assessment doesn’t stop a fatality, it’s the process, the things you check that do. We’re crystal clear on what’s important to us – preservation of life and assets.”
This focus is embedded throughout the organisation and its contractors in terms of accountability and performance measurement, he said.
Discussing the role leadership plays in proactively identifying and mitigating risks before they escalate into serious incidents, Munn said this starts from the top and cascades all the way down. Echoing Watson’s message on priorities, he said, “The message is very clear, critical risk management and high potential events is our main focus area.”
This message is driven down through contractor training at all levels to educate them on managing critical risks, which is linked to their monthly payments and tied into the KPIs of the Sports Boulevard leadership itself.
“It’s not about compliance from day one,” he went on. “This is a journey we’re all on together, whether we’re the client, whether it’s our PMC, whether it’s our contractors, their subcontractors and delivery partners. If one bit fails, then we all fail. So from our side, it’s around educating and coaching so it’s the contractor making those conscious decisions, and not just being driven by me and my team.”
Discussing the visibility of leadership and impact of strong health and safety leadership on the overall safety culture on construction sites and on incident rates, Munn emphasised the onus on the leadership to drive through the culture of safety, with commitment required from all CEOs working with Sports Boulevard to meet its standards and requirements.
He discussed the challenges of changing the culture of compliance and reiterated the need for leadership to be visible and felt, breaking down barriers to create a culture where conversations around health, safety and welfare can take place, thus transforming the worksite.
Safety reporting
Addressing the question of safety reporting, Watson highlighted ACWA Power’s newly-introduced Reporting Integrity Index, which measures the quality and accuracy of safety reporting, explaining how it gives a truthful picture and changes the narrative around safety performance in senior leadership meetings. There followed some discussion about the importance of focusing on adding value, holding people accountable for proactive activities and continuous improvement, as opposed to checking boxes. As Larry Wilson put it, “Our job is to make sure that those activities we’re holding people accountable for will produce a dividend.”
Watson added that the integration of AI into reporting systems which can, for example, query corrective actions and recommend better ones, giving a quality score for inputs, has resulted in a demonstrable difference in the quality of work. “It’s educating you about what good practice is every time you go into the system. It’s the biggest change in reporting I’ve seen in a decade,” he said.
Summing up, Muhammad Jawad Ali said, “Accountability in HSE is not about adding more compliance layers. It’s about embedding ownership at every level of the organisation, prioritising the risk that really matters, using structures and systems to measure and incentivise accountability, leading visibly and consistently and last, but not least, leveraging innovation and technology to stay proactive, not reactive.
“Accountability is not a report, not a KPI or a compliance audit, it’s a leadership value that must translate into daily actions. If every leader owns safety, measurable outcomes will definitely follow.”
