What is the ORP International Foundation?
The ORP International Foundation defines itself in its own institutional documentation as an independent, non-profit, international organization whose purpose is innovation and comprehensive services for guidance and dissemination of knowledge in labor, economic, and social matters. The acronym ORP comes from the expression “Organization of Occupational Risk Prevention,” which is also the name of its flagship congress.
It is a private, foundation-based entity. It is not a public body, does not issue regulations, and has no power to control or sanction companies. Its role is to serve as a platform for meetings and technical dissemination among professionals, companies, universities, and institutions involved in prevention.
Its headquarters are in Barcelona, at the Parc UPC Campus Nord, and it maintains offices in Santiago, Chile; Bogotá, Colombia; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. This distribution explains the significant role the Foundation has played in building a professional Ibero-American community for occupational safety and health.
The Foundation does not publish its formal establishment year on its website. The first ORP International Congress recorded in its event history was held in 2000 in Tenerife, which marks the beginning of its public activity.
Purpose and scope of action
The Foundation’s stated mission is innovation and comprehensive services in guidance and promotion of knowledge dissemination in labor, economic, and social matters. Its published institutional values are competence, commitment, dialogue, initiative, pioneering spirit, transparency, innovation, and research.
Its scope of action is international, with two clear focuses. The first is Latin America, where it has developed conferences, workshops, and agreements with universities, government agencies, and companies. The second is the international prevention ecosystem, in which it participates in networks and forums related to international labor standards, such as those that develop ILO Convention 155 and global initiatives for a culture of prevention.
The Foundation structures its activity through four declared lines: the promotion of prevention and corporate social responsibility, the development of technological solutions aimed at safety and well-being at work, research in prevention in collaboration with universities, and the organization of congresses, symposia and technical conferences.
Functions and main lines of work
The Foundation’s activity is organized around four main blocks.
- Conferences and workshops. The ORP International Congress is the flagship event and has toured cities in Spain and Latin America since 2000. The Foundation lists more than twenty international congresses on its website, in addition to symposia, Lean ORP meetings, and hundreds of technical workshops.
- Publications. She publishes the ORP Journal, an academic publication, and is linked to the Prevención Integral portal, a digital media outlet specializing in occupational safety and health.
- Awards. It grants the ORP International Award and business recognitions to organizations and initiatives in the field of prevention.
- Committees. It has a scientific committee, a business advisory committee and an institutional advisory committee, the latter made up of administrations, universities, professional associations and insurance entities from different countries.
These lines are complemented by training activities, channeled through postgraduate university programs, and the development of the Cultura5Z initiative, its own model of a healthy company.
Contribution to safety and health at work
The Foundation’s main contribution is the creation of a stable space for technical exchange among prevention professionals from countries with very different regulatory frameworks. An ORP congress brings together in the same room Spanish technicians working under Law 31/1995 , Chilean officials operating under Law 16.744 , and Colombian specialists applying Decree 1072 of 2015. This contrast of models is difficult to find in forums of a purely national scope.
The Foundation has also contributed to spreading internationally promoted preventive culture approaches in the Ibero-American sphere , in particular the Vision Zero strategy of the International Social Security Association, which constitutes the conceptual basis of its own Cultura5Z model.
At the 23rd World Congress on Safety and Health at Work, held in Sydney in November 2023, the International Social Security Association recognized 21 organizations promoting the Vision Zero strategy in a ceremony. The Foundation states in its institutional communication that it is among the organizations recognized with the 2023 Vision Zero award; however, the association’s public sources consulted for this fact sheet do not include a list of the award recipients.
Programs, resources and initiatives
Three initiatives of the Foundation have their own entity and separate entry in this encyclopedia.
- Cultura5Z . A healthy business model structured around five zero-points: accidents, illnesses, waste, inequality, and lack of awareness. It incorporates the 5Z Seal, a private distinction awarded by the Foundation itself to organizations that complete its process.
- Prevención Integral . A digital portal specializing in occupational safety and health, with news, technical documentation, a professional community, and materials from ORP conferences.
- ORP Journal. An academic publication that compiles papers presented at conferences.
The institutional advisory committee brings together public bodies, professional associations, insurance companies, and research centers from Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. This network is the source of most of the entries in this Sabentis Explore family.
Practical application
For a prevention professional, the Foundation is primarily a gateway to comparative knowledge and international contacts. The conference presentations, published openly on its website, allow users to follow how common problems such as accident investigation , the management of psychosocial factors , and the digitalization of prevention are addressed in other countries .
For an organization, participation in its committees or in the 5Z Culture model is a way to compare its preventative approach with that of entities in other systems. It’s important to remember that neither committee membership nor the 5Z seal replaces the legal obligations of the country in which the company operates, nor does it equate to certification of regulatory compliance.
Relationship with Sabentis
Sabentis Explore makes this relationship explicit for the sake of editorial transparency. Sabentis has participated in ORP conferences as both a speaker and an exhibitor: the official program of the ORP 2025 International Congress includes presentations by Sabentis professionals, and the report published by the Foundation itself about that edition mentions the company’s stand in the exhibition area.
The content of this document is based on institutional documentation published by the Foundation itself and on the official sources cited in the references section. It does not include assessments of its performance or collaboration agreements that are not documented in public sources.
