Conditions

Safe plants and the strong safety awareness of our employees together with clear requirements and guidelines are the prerequisite for safe production.

Safety through uniform standards

BASF’s Responsible Care Management System comprises the global policies, standards and guidance documents for environmental and health protection and safety and security for various stations along our value chain. We constantly supplement or update these and regularly audit their implementation.

Our global requirement on occupational safety provides the necessary framework for safe work in order to protect employees, contractors, visitors, and neighbors of BASF.

We also commit to actions such as conducting safety inspections and risk assessments. Our standards describe, for example, the use of work permits and the implementation of noise limits in the workplace.

It is extremely important to us that all contractors working at our locations never compromise on safety. Our global requirement for contractor safety regulates, for example, the process to ensure contractors receive safety instructions at the site level prior to commencing work.

Our global requirement on occupational safety also establishes the use of appropriate personal protective equipment, an important aspect of occupational safety. Additionally, we provide our employees throughout Europe with a common range of personal protective equipment.

Incident reporting

Our global requirement on EHS reporting creates a standard on incident reporting. We record all accidents and near misses of BASF employees and leasing and contractor companies as well as other incidents, such as process safety incidents, from all sites worldwide in our databases. We use this data to learn from mistakes in order to introduce adequate measures and continuously improve.  Likewise, our global requirement on incident management, which includes a common risk matrix, creates a standard for managing incidents from incident occurrence to confirmation of the effectiveness of implemented countermeasures.

Qualification measures

It is our long-standing practice to promote safe work by using specific qualification measures. In addition to the legally required safety instructions, we also held training courses on safe procedures in 2018 to strengthen risk-awareness among our employees and contractors and prevent work-related accidents. At the Ludwigshafen site, our “Safety Champions Center” has offered continuous further education on diverse safety and security topics for employees and contractors since 2010.

Hazard identification and risk assessments

By conducting hazard identification and risk assessments of tasks and workplaces, we support our employees and contractors in becoming aware to potential hazards and thus minimize risks.  Our global guidance document on hazard identification and risk assessments helps employees with a method to identify and analyze risk, assess risks, and evaluate safeguards. This also includes assessment of new technologies to ensure that they are handled safely.