Safety Lessons From Energy for the Guyana Hospitality Sector

Admin Totaltec
7 days ago
3 min read

17 October 2025, Georgetown, Guyana; The rapid growth of the Guyana hospitality sector presents safety challenges the energy sector manages well, offering opportunities for cross-learning. Its culture, procedures, and technology ensure that high risk situations are safely managed. Individuals performing tasks - from simple to complex - do so with a mindset of prioritizing safety, instilled with a safety culture. This powerful culture and best practices offer important lessons for the Guyana hospitality sector.

3 Key Safety Tools for Hospitality

While upstream oil and gas offers many safety lessons for hospitality, from the TOTALTEC leadership experience, here are three key ones;

Safety Culture - Always Being Built, Senior Leadership Led
Risk Management - Hazard Identification and Mitigation
Training - Ongoing, with Competence Assessment

Commenting, TOTALTEC CEO Lars Mangal; “By integrating proven safety practices from upstream oil and gas, Guyana’s hospitality sector can protect staff, customers, and business reputation. Safety is an investment, not an expense."

Safety Culture

The culture in the oil and gas industry prioritizes safety as a core value, and it is continuously reenforced by senior leadership. It motivates every employee to always ‘think safety, act safely’, recognizing that it is a shared responsibility.

A key element of a strong safety culture is empowering individuals to speak up any time they have a concern or doubt regarding safety. Each person is empowered to stop work if they believe there are unidentified hazards, a procedure not understood, or if the individual does not feel confident in their skills for their responsibility.

Regarding the hospitality sector, Mangal commented; “A strong safety culture emphasizes leadership commitment, open communication, and shared responsibility. Encouraging staff to speak up, report hazards, and prioritize safety is our top priority. We see this working at our recently opened SOMA Hotel and Restaurant.”

Risk Management

Effective risk management in the oil and gas industry involves systematic hazard identification and mitigation strategies. Two examples of risk management tools that the hospitality sector adapt well to hospitality are Toolbox Talks and Permit to Work systems. Considering each;

Prior to a job or activity, Toolbox Talks bring all those involved together to discuss roles, risks, how those risks will be managed, and any contingencies. All workers are encouraged to participate in the discussion, and leadership takes the opportunity to reenforce a safety culture. In hospitality, this could be at shift handover or prior to major equipment maintenance.

A Permit To Work (PTW) system is present on all oil and gas installations. PTW is a formal, documented process for controlling high-risk activities to ensure safety. It involves a written permit that authorizes specific individuals to perform a task at a particular time and place, ensuring that all necessary safety precautions have been taken, including risk assessments. The PTW system acts as a critical communication tool between management and workers.

Mangal highlighted the importance of communication in risk management; “At SOMA we work to build a mindset in all staff of looking for risks, and communicating those to fellow employees.”

Training and Competence Assessment

In upstream oil and gas, training is fundamental to maintaining a competent and motivated workforce, with safety forming an important part of all training activities. Regular competence assessments verify that individuals can apply their knowledge effectively, identify potential hazards, and respond appropriately at all times, particularly in emergencies.

Like upstream, for hospitality, training requirements should be established for each position in the organization, with associated competency assessment. This continuous learning approach has the additional benefits of promoting a safety culture, and supporting employee retention.

In closing, Mangal commented, “The first service TOTALTEC offered, way back in 2018, was safety training. That business continues, and has been expanded to hospitality, our SOMA employees now benefiting.”