Gretel D'Amico
"The most costly gaps aren't a lack of vision: they're the distance between what's decided in the boardroom and what happens on the ground."
25 years leading Process Safety, Operational Excellence and Cultural Transformation at leading Oil & Gas companies, with a focus on upstream operations. Today I work with industrial organisations in energy, mining and other process sectors, with an initial focus on Latin America. These same frameworks — process safety, operational excellence and cultural transformation — are transferable there.
When I Add Value
When strategy is set at the top but consistently fails to land in operations.
When processes or technologies are designed and implemented without the culture and leadership work needed to sustain them, and traditional change management isn't enough; it requires a deeper, more structural approach.
When operational risk, processes and technology are managed in isolation, without a risk lens feeding into business decision-making.
When EHS management fails to sustain results: recurring incidents, preventive tools that aren't adopted, or programmes that don't move the expected indicators.
When each area meets its own KPIs, but those results, added together, don't solve the business's real problem.
When too many initiatives run at once, competing for the same resources, leaving the organisation confused.
When cross-functional processes are undefined or not working in a coordinated way across areas: capital project management, contractor management, integrated planning, continuous improvement.
When AI initiatives are evaluated or implemented without first fixing the underlying process, risking the automation of existing errors or inefficiencies.
When a company operates as a service provider to the industry and needs to adapt its risk and process management to meet the standards required by its operator clients.
In most cases, one-off solutions have already been tried — a training session, a technical consultant, a piece of software. The underlying problem is still there because no one integrated the whole picture.
This isn't a perception, it's the industry's data
Execution determines how much value is captured. McKinsey analysed 72 organisations and found that transformations with greater execution rigour achieved over 80% of their objectives within 24 months, with better performance and organisational health outcomes.
McKinsey, "Rigor: What it takes to turn ambition into impact" (2026)In 2025, the Fatal Accident Rate rose 75% — fatalities increased from 32 to 52 — while TRIR fell 6%. Fewer recordable injuries did not mean lower exposure to high-consequence risks.
IOGP, Safety Performance Indicators – 2025 Data (2026)85% of 2025 fatalities involved contractors. They accounted for approximately 76% of hours worked reported to IOGP and had a fatal accident rate 70% higher than direct employees (1.49 vs. 0.88). Risk is concentrated in those who execute, not those who direct: contractors are the last line of defence in the chain.
IOGP, Safety Performance Indicators – 2025 Data (2026)Value is lost when functions work in silos. Across more than 45 business units and 180 upstream assets, McKinsey found 6% lower operating costs and 2 percentage points higher production efficiency in models that integrate functions around the asset.
McKinsey, "Five features of operational excellence in oil and gas organizations" (2024)More than half of the causal factors identified in 2025 fatal incident investigations were organisational — leadership, supervision, work standards — not individual acts. IOGP's Human Performance approach confirms this shift: looking beyond individual action, towards the context that enables it.
IOGP, Safety Performance Indicators 2025, Tabla de factores causales; IOGP, Report 810 — Advancing Human Performance (2026)"Poor leadership or organisational culture" was cited as a causal factor in high-potential events six times more often than in fatal incidents over the last decade. For IOGP, the opportunity lies in how leaders respond to those signals — before they turn into tragedy.
IOGP, Safety Performance Indicators 2025, Tabla de factores causales en eventos de alto potencial; IOGP, Report 810 — Advancing Human Performance (2026)Three service lines, one integrated framework: processes, people and technology, so capability stays embedded in the organisation.
Strategy, Transformation and Governance
I work with leadership and management teams to clarify the real problem or opportunity, and we co-build the roadmap, with end-to-end accountability for execution and results.
Learn more →Process Safety and Operational Excellence
I design and implement PSM and Operational Excellence frameworks, integrating risk management and efficiency, addressing processes, people and technology in a continuous improvement cycle.
Learn more →Culture and Leadership in Risk Management and Operational Excellence
I enable the consistent, sustainable execution of what the organisation decides, by developing culture, leadership and capabilities — as a standalone service or as a thread running through the other two service lines.
Learn more →How I Work
I bring a systemic perspective: every intervention is considered in relation to the whole — how it affects other areas, processes and people. Never as an isolated fix.
Diagnosis
I identify the real gap between what's decided at the top and what happens on the ground, without assuming the symptom is the cause. I combine interviews, field visits, surveys and group sessions as each organisation needs.
Design
I build the framework and roadmap together with the organisation, integrating processes, people, technology, culture and leadership — not as parallel initiatives, but as a single system. I draw on recognised industry best practice as well as my own expertise, working hand in hand with internal teams to tailor the design to each organisation.
Implementation
I lead execution on the ground, involving people early, because change happens when they're part of it, not when it's simply announced. I track progress with concrete indicators and adjust the plan as reality unfolds.
Embedded Capability
I transfer the framework and tools so the organisation keeps evolving without depending on my continued presence, training the internal teams who will sustain it and documenting the knowledge generated along the way.
What I Don't Do
I transform organisations and their teams to become increasingly safe, reliable and efficient.
I do this by putting people at the centre: when they have clarity of purpose, take ownership of change and commit to what they do, the organisation develops its own capabilities to sustain and improve results over time.
I have worked at Pan American Energy, Pluspetrol and PECOM. Engineer in Business Organisation (UADE), MBA (UCEMA). I bring 25 years of experience combining technical vision with pragmatic, hands-on leadership.