Safety as a shared culture: key takeaways from Fabien Malbranque’s interview in The Energy Year

How do you build a shared safety culture across environments as diverse as airport operations, mining sites, healthcare facilities, and food production units? This is the central question explored by Fabien Malbranque, Group QHSSE Director at Newrest, in an interview with the industry publication The Energy Year.

Throughout the discussion, he explains how Newrest deploys a common safety approach on a global scale while adapting it to the specific realities of each business activity.

Safety belongs to operations

For Newrest, safety is not solely the responsibility of QHSSE teams. While they provide expertise, tools, and support, responsibility for safety performance ultimately belongs to operational teams and frontline managers.

This philosophy lies at the heart of the I CARE by Newrest program: making safety an integral part of every operational decision, just like production performance or service quality.

This approach is reflected in concrete initiatives such as Gemba Walks, safety observations, Safety Stops, and behavioral safety programs.

A common culture across diverse environments

From airport operations and hospitals to remote energy and mining sites, Newrest teams face a wide variety of risks. Nevertheless, the Group relies everywhere on the same core principles: leadership, risk identification, Non-Negotiables, reporting, and continuous improvement.

The objective is not to make every operation identical, but to ensure that the same safety culture guides decision-making in the field, regardless of the environment.

Results that reflect team commitment

Several remarkable achievements have recently been reached thanks to this collective commitment:

• 5 million hours without a lost-time injury on the Gold Fields operations in Peru.
• 14 consecutive years without a lost-time injury aboard the GIRASSOL offshore platform in Angola.
• A 99.5% service quality and food safety score at Hamad Medical Cooperation Hospitals.
• A 95.57% satisfaction rate among 12,000 patients representing 134 nationalities.

Beyond the metrics themselves, these results reflect a common mindset: everyone should be able to identify a risk, speak up, and take action before an incident occurs.

Towards an even more proactive safety culture

Fabien also highlights the growing role of technology in prevention.

Tools such as Calypso and connected temperature monitoring systems integrated into Winrest enable teams to detect deviations more rapidly and intervene before they escalate into incidents.

For Fabien Malbranque, the challenge is clear: move beyond accident statistics and develop an increasingly preventive approach based on risk observation, employee engagement, and continuous improvement.

This interview serves as a reminder that beyond procedures and tools, safety is above all a culture shared by all Newrest employees around the world.

Discover the full interview: Newrest builds a common safety culture across global operations – Fabien MALBRANQUE – The Energy Year