We believe that working with contractors and suppliers who comply with and support our safety, environmental, human-rights-related and other industry standards is critical to the overall success of our business. Adherence to our requirements on health, safety and environmental management and performance is essential to our supplier selection process, as is compliance with applicable laws and requirements pertaining to fair labor and human-rights-related standards.
We undertake comprehensive contractor and supplier prehire screening and monitor compliance on an ongoing basis. This includes screening and monitoring safety, environmental, financial, anti-corruption and fair labor practices and performance. Similarly, we work to ensure our suppliers of goods and services and our partners across the supply chain, including shipping counterparties, uphold our ethics and performance expectations. We apply robust quality assurance procedures to assess, monitor and enforce stringent compliance standards for our suppliers and commercial counterparts. We continue to enhance our supplier management systems to support more effective supplier sourcing, screening and prequalification processes; ongoing supplier monitoring; compliance tracking and reporting; and annual supplier evaluation.
Depending on the type of work conducted, prescreening and ongoing compliance monitoring criteria that suppliers must comply with in order to do business with us may include safety and environmental management and performance, drug and alcohol screening, anti-bribery and corruption compliance, mitigation of risks to data protection and privacy, and security and background checks. Our prescreening and ongoing monitoring criteria include a range of topics and standards that are key drivers of safe and responsible operations. These include assessments of suppliers’ programs for incident reporting and investigation, behavior-based safety and stop-work authority, short-service employees and management of subcontractors. In 2022, we implemented an automated system to support ongoing verification of suppliers’ compliance with our HSE and other requirements and expectations. We also further enhanced our risk-based approach pertaining to supplier insurance requirements.
All of our suppliers undergo prescreening that includes environmental and social criteria. We follow a prequalification process to establish our expectations for compliance with applicable labor and HSE laws and standards, including human-rights-related standards.
100% of Cheniere’s active suppliers and contractors who provide equipment, materials and services utilized to construct, maintain and run our LNG facilities, pipelines and corporate functions acknowledged our Supplier Code of Conduct, or submitted an equivalent standard that we accepted on behalf of our own.
To help ensure ongoing compliance with our standards for environmental, safety, labor rights and other key performance criteria, after suppliers and contractors have been onboarded, we continue to perform comprehensive due diligence processes to identify and monitor potential supply disruption; applicable regulatory, trade and sanctions requirements; and ethics and compliance risks, including individual worker compliance with safety training and other requirements. We host an annual supplier meeting to reconfirm expectations and requirements and collaborate with our suppliers on continuous improvement.
Suppliers are required to review and confirm that they understand and agree to comply with our Supplier Code of Conduct, which addresses a range of ethical and responsible business practices such as HSE, regulatory compliance and business integrity, including a focus on social responsibility and human rights. Under the code, suppliers are expected to comply with the environmental rules, regulations and standards applicable to their operations and follow environmentally conscious practices in all locations where they operate. In 2022, we revised our supplier requirements and made public our Supplier Code of Conduct. We strive to ensure that HSE requirements applicable to the scale and scope of activities are included in our supplier contract requirements, including requirements for safety programs and training, environmental processes and procedures, and regulatory compliance.
In addition, we have implemented a stringent marine assurance program, which is aligned with and exceeds industry-specific best practices. This helps us monitor, assess and capture whether our shipping counterparts are continuing to operate in accordance with recognized environmental, safety and operational standards and best practices. This entails comprehensive due diligence processes and procedures to assess our shipping counterparties, including extensive reviews of background information on their past and current ethics and compliance practices.
These due diligence efforts are an integral part of our efforts to help ensure that we work with suppliers who respect human rights principles and align with our broader values.
Should incumbent suppliers or contractors fail to meet our requirements, we work with them to regain the levels of compliance required to maintain their business with Cheniere.