Angelo Spingardi runs HSEQ — health, safety, environment and quality — across Saipem's 118 operational sites worldwide, from offshore platforms to construction sites across the energy transition. He's been inside the company for 17 years, starting as an environmental engineer before being embedded into Saipem's safety functions.
In this episode he shared the personal loss that shaped his career, the leadership question that reframes how you investigate every accident, and the story behind Fail Safe — the film Saipem built to make human performance principles real on the ground.
We also get into why vulnerability — not authority — is what actually gets people to admit their mistakes, why "safety is a consequence, not a target," and how Angelo has gone 17 years without ever having to argue for a safety budget.
Timestamps
00:00 — Cold open: why empathy is the foundation of safety leadership
01:47 — Trust, empathy, communication: anchoring 17 years in HSEQ
03:09 — From environmental engineer to Group Director HSEQ — the accidental path into safety
04:25 — The personal loss that made safety personal: losing a friend at work
06:25 — Earning trust vs. imposing procedure: how to get a room to actually listen
09:55 — "Safety is a race without a finish line" — his CEO's metaphor
10:29 — Do leaders really see safety as an investment, or still as a cost center?
12:45 — The reframe: safety is a consequence, not a target
14:35 — 17 years, zero arguments about a safety budget
18:15 — The leadership accountability reframe: step back a week, a month, a year
20:39 — Inside "Fail Safe": how Saipem's near-miss reconstruction film was born
22:44 — Benchmarking against civil aviation and air traffic control
24:03 — Why storytelling and film beat slides and procedures
25:53 — What "Fail Safe" really means: humans err, systems must catch it
26:46 — Vulnerability as a leadership skill: "I screwed up"
29:11 — The "macho man" problem in construction, and why psychological safety is hard-won
30:02 — Playing the film for 55 distracted people — and watching the room go silent
31:24 — What makes a human-performance program actually work, beyond the video
34:05 — Staying grounded: how Angelo avoids burnout after 17 years running safety
36:00 — Close
Angelo Spingardi is Group Director HSEQ at Saipem, architect of the company's 2024–27 Safety Strategic Plan. In 2024, Saipem's TRIFR came in at 0.34 against a 0.41 target.
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