RISK-BASED HSE GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORK FOR ENHANCING THE RESILIENCE OF CRITICAL INDUSTRIAL INFRASTRUCTURE IN SAUDI ARABIA

Saudi Arabia's industrial growth is predicated on infrastructure and the disruption of that infrastructure can have a cascading effect on the safety of workers, the safety of the communities around it, the environment and the delivery of essential services. Traditional HSE (health, safety and environment) arrangements tend to look at these various aspects in isolation through separate compliance, occupational and process safety regimes. This critical integrative review looks at how risk-based governance can bring those various regimes together in a way that enables infrastructure resilience. A structured, purposive evidence synthesis was conducted on 30 DOI identifiable publications from the period 2020 to 2025 covering critical infrastructure, major accident prevention, organisationalbehaviour, emergency preparedness and digital assurance. Six interdependent governance functions are identified: strategic accountability, system wide risk intelligence, verified safety barriers, workforce participation, adaptive emergency capability and independent learning. A lifecycle framework is then developed which links asset criticality, cross sector dependencies, tolerable service interruption, decision rights and measurable recovery performance. The review makes it clear that resilience cannot be assumed from the completion of an audit, the frequency of incidents or the acquisition of technology. Operators must be able to demonstrate that their controls are effective under changing conditions and that they can recover critical functions without transferring the risk of harm elsewhere. The framework provides a testable basis for Saudi industrial operators, infrastructure owners and regulators and recognises that locally calibrated thresholds and prospective validation will be required.