Applications Invited for Global Safety Evidence Centre funding call 2025

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About the Organization

Lloyd’s Register Foundation is a global safety charity with a mission to engineer a safer world. Building on the Foundation’s partnerships and impact to date, and harnessing over 250 years of maritime safety knowledge, we focus on enhancing the safety of life and property through the development of standards and education.

The Foundation has a unique structure. Our income comes from dividends through our investments, and from Lloyd's Register Group (LR), a global trading company. As well as financial contributions, LR is a global provider of safety services, that aligns to our mission.

Plus, we draw on LR’s knowledge, networks, and expertise to drive more impact through our work.

About the Grant

At Lloyd's Register Foundation we have recently launched our 2024-2029 strategy, reaffirming a commitment to making a significant difference in improving the safety of people and critical infrastructure. As part of this vision, we are launching a Global Safety Evidence Centre, a hub for anyone who needs to know ‘what works’ to make people safer in the face of a range of global safety challenges, including workplace accidents and injuries. Alongside the launch, we are delighted to announce a call for proposals to support research and evidence projects that address occupational safety and health (OSH) evidence gaps, as well as broader safety science work, such as how to measure and value safety and prevention, and how to learn from past failures and successes.

The Global Safety Evidence Centre collates, creates and communicates the best available safety evidence from the Foundation, our partners and other sources, on both the nature and scale of global safety challenges, and what works to address them. It works with partners to identify and fill gaps in the evidence, and to use the evidence for action for anyone who needs to know ‘what works’ to make people safer. The Evidence Centre will initially focus on two areas:

• Safety Science: Safety is a broad field with many disciplines, professions and use contexts.  We aim to bring together the relevant knowledge, tools and methods across these fields to help improve safety outcomes.
• Safe Work: The Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll consistently finds that, one in five workers globally (18%) experienced harm at work in the last two years, and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates this to be the cause of three million deaths annually. Around the world and across industrial sectors, many professionals, policy and decision-makers who need to consider safety do not have access to sufficient high-quality evidence; either because it does not yet exist, or because it has not been collated and communicated to them in an understandable and actionable form. Evidence is critical to improving the safety of people and property; without it, we cannot fully understand the nature and scale of safety challenges faced by people around the world, nor what works to protect them from harm.

The grants from this funding will directly contribute to the Foundation’s mission to engineer a safer world and the strategic objective of growing the foundation’s capability and reputation as a trusted source of safety evidence and insight. These grants are intended to create evidence to improve understanding and sharing of which safety interventions work; inform decision making; and highlight and fill knowledge and data gaps, ultimately influencing others to act and leading to better safety outcomes.

What we're looking for:

We are seeking ambitious and innovative proposals that aim to support with understanding and sharing which safety interventions work; inform decision making; highlight and fill knowledge and data gaps and lead to safer outcomes; or lead to the creation of evidence to support efforts to influence others to act. Evidence outputs must be open access and will form part of the evidence repository of the Foundation’s Global Safety Evidence Centre.

Proposals should be for evidence projects of up to two years. We anticipate to see budgets of between £100,000 to £250,000 but should you wish to discuss projects with smaller or larger budgets please get in touch on the below details. Proposals that are seeking to secure the higher budget threshold are likely to be those resulting in multiple research types or areas or regions of focus. Applications that leverage funding from other sources is highly encouraged.

Themes and topics:

Proposals should address one or more of the following themes:

• Safe Work: the creation of a safe work environment, particularly in ‘high hazard’ industries, building on insights from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll. We are seeking proposals that contribute to the evidence base for the Sustainable Development Goal 8.8: Promote Safe Working Environments.  
• Safety Science: knowledge about risk and safety, and how individuals understand, assess, measure and manage them, at work and in other spheres such as transport, energy or other critical infrastructures. At present safety science terms are poorly defined, occupational safety and health interventions are inconsistent and those that are implemented are typically never evaluated. We are seeking evidence projects to support in defining key terms and approaches, and evidence that seeks to use models and theories to make causal relations in safety evidence.

Types of research projects:

Proposals should take the form of one or more of the following research outputs:

• Evidence reviews and synthesis
• Research, evaluations and trials
• Data generation and analysis
• Stakeholders, evidence use and policy analysis

Essential criteria:

It is anticipated that high quality proposals will feature the following characteristics:

• Research should build on, challenge, or extend existing knowledge in the field and address a relevant gap or need.
• Research method design should be sound, appropriate, and carefully considered, with a well-founded approach based on the best available evidence or theory. 
• Research should take a systematic and transparent approach to analysis and interpretation. 
• Evidence reviews should have a pre-registered protocol with clear inclusion and exclusion criteria and take a systematic and transparent approach to searching and selecting studies as well as a robust and consistent way of appraising the quality of included studies and assessing the confidence level of the review findings.
• Researchers should demonstrate an understanding of the context for the area of government or policy that they hope to inform and/or an understanding of how their work is grounded in real world context. 
• Objectives and outcomes should be clearly defined and feasible, given the current stage of knowledge, with a logical methodology suited to achieving the goals. 
• The project should be realistically achievable with the proposed resources, timeline, and expertise, and the plan should align with the stage of knowledge, whether it is early-stage exploration or advanced application.
• The proposal should have a clear dissemination plan and collaboration activities for explaining, sharing, and using results.
• Proposals should demonstrate how their scope aligns with our mission to engineer a safer world and the potential for leveraging wider support and generating long-term impact. 

Desirable criteria:

• Applications that leverage funding from other sources is highly encouraged.
• Applications for research is strongly encouraged in the Foundation’s Ocean Centre countries; Brazil, Kenya, Ghana, Bangladesh, India, Philippines and Indonesia, as well as other coastal communities that share geographic and societal characteristics and collaborations. Research from other countries should prove a higher level of leveraged funding from other sources. 
• Whilst safety evidence projects are welcomed from a broad spectrum of areas, there is a preference for projects that address the Foundation’s strategic priorities of Safer Maritime Systems; Safer Sustainable Infrastructure; and Skilled People for Safer Engineering. 
• There will also be a preference for projects that consider the Foundations strategic challenges of Adapting to Climate Change, Decarbonisation, New Technologies, and Changing Global Workforce. To discuss this further please do contact our team, (contacts listed below). 
• We are particularly keen to see projects that are global and led by local voices, including practitioner led work. 

Who can Apply

This call is open to academic institutions, research organisations, non-profit organisations and industry worldwide. Collaborations across sectors and disciplines are highly encouraged. Eligible institutions must be actively engaged in research activities that align with Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s mission to engineer a safer world, focusing on safety science and safe work.

In line with government guidelines, Lloyd’s Register Foundation adheres to the following principles when granting funds to non-charitable organisations:

• Lloyd’s Register Foundation grants must only fund activities, services, or outcomes aligned with its charitable mission.
• Funding for support costs is restricted to specified activities, services, or outcomes. Please consult further information on the Applying for Funding and Managing Awards pages of the Foundation’s website.
• Grants must not provide personal benefit to individuals involved.
• Lloyd’s Register Foundation and its Trustees must justify each funding decision as serving the Foundation’s best interests.
• Recipients must use funds for the stated purpose, ensuring public or organisational benefit, not profit.
• These principles ensure that all grants to non-charitable organisations remain aligned with Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s mission and are compliant with relevant regulatory standards.

Applications for research are strongly encouraged in the Foundation’s Ocean Centre countries; Brazil, Kenya, Ghana, Bangladesh, India, Philippines and Indonesia, as well as other coastal communities that share geographic and societal characteristics and collaborations.

How to Apply

• Stage 1: Register with our grants management system

To begin your application, you will need to create an account on Flexigrant via the Lloyd’s Register Foundation portal homepage. Once registered, you will receive an email to verify your account. Please ensure all organisational and contact details are accurate when creating your account.

• Stage 2: Submit an expression of interest

Deadline for expression of interest:

To ensure timely consideration, please submit your expression of interest by 17 September 2025 (23:59 BST).

• Stage 3: Full Proposal Submission (Invitation Only)

For more information please check the Link

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Tags Innovations and Technology Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Research Others