How Information Sharing Has Changed: Part 1 SFAIRP Internet

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 7, Episode 8

In this first of two episodes of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis explore how the SFAIRP principle (So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable) applies to managing internet risk.

Richard explains R2A's journey with data security, from backing up to CDs and running an in-house server, to shifting to cloud hosting during Melbourne's COVID lockdowns, and ultimately landing on an offline-first approach that keeps them and sensitive client data off the internet as much as possible.

Richard and Gaye discuss the growing tension between staying secure and staying connected and the rising problem of how AI systems may be designed to tell you what you want to hear rather than what's true.

The episode wraps with a relatable parallel: Gaye's battle to limit her daughters' screen time is, at its core, the same SFAIRP challenge organisations face every day – you need to be online in today’s world, but being online continuously creates risk. 

Listen to Part 2 (Season 7, Episode 9), where they discuss risk in the public sphere.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. This is the first of two episodes where due diligence engineers, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss How Information Sharing Has Changed with Part 1 on SFAIRP Internet.

(00:18):

We hope you enjoy the chat. If you do, please support our work by giving us a rating and subscribing on your favourite podcast platform. And if you'd like more information on R2A, our newsletter and resources, or have any feedback or topic ideas, please head to the website, www.r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:39):

Hello Richard. Welcome to our podcast session today.

Richard Robinson (00:42):

Morning, Elizabeth Gaye. Good to be here.

Gaye Francis (00:44):

Oh, thank you.

Richard Robinson (00:46):

You're meant to say hello in Finnish based on an early discussion?

Gaye Francis (00:53):

<laughs> Okay. Today we're going to talk about SFAIRP and how it relates to managing internet risk. And I think that's one that's really become increasingly common and needs to be thought through a little bit by organisations, especially in the age that we're living in now. And I think you were going to explain R2A's journey with internet risk and how we've been managing it over the last probably 10 years or so.

Richard Robinson (01:22):

I like the term manage in that regard, but basically it was just worth explaining the history of this because it sort of explains why we are where we are. I mean, in history, we can remember backing things up to CDs and having duplicate CDs and carting them around.

Gaye Francis (01:39):

Correct. That was my monthly task or every three months to cut a CD of everything that we backed up to the file server.

Richard Robinson (01:46):

But then this drive suddenly got big and so we could write all the CDs back to the disk drive and then we could have a server in the office. Now when we put the server in the office, we're a bit more cunning. We didn't just sort of make it live with the internet with an address. Basically, even at that time, we concluded the right way to be secure is as far as possible not to be on the internet. It's the elimination option in SFAIRP terms. So what we basically did was put a server which was just serving to the office on the hard line and it had its own dedicated internal IP address and all those sorts of things with its own security. And that means anytime you wanted to back something up or get something, you had to actually be in the office. You couldn't be offsite. And if you wanted something, you had to get somebody to mail it to you if you didn't have it with you on the time. And part of the reason for doing that was because laptops didn't just have enough memory. So anyway, then COVID turned up.

Gaye Francis (02:37):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (02:38):

And our office basically got, well, we had to sort of leave the damn thing because they gave us six months at a reduced rate, but then they wanted to put it back up to 100% again. And we had another 18 months that turned out in Melbourne locked out. So we sort of had to move out. So what we then decided to do was to put our current in-house secure server on the internet, on a secure, I think it was AWS, Amazon Web Server, I think it was. And we hired quite expensive advice from a very competent person. And that was set up and that worked, that actually worked quite well.

Gaye Francis (03:08):

So you were able to dial in remotely.

Richard Robinson (03:11):

And everything was available online. The problem with that was that we didn't have a big staff. And when something went wrong, we tended to have to rehire this person. And because he wasn't spending time with us all the time, he had to go and reconsider our system. And it was all a bit klutzy.

Gaye Francis (03:28):

It added complexity to it, didn't it? And we didn't have control over what was happening.

Richard Robinson (03:33):

Yeah. And every time we wanted something, you had to log in and then something didn't work and you're going, what the hell happened? And then I'd ring you up and say, what's going on? Or perhaps more accurately, you rang me up.

Gaye Francis (03:42):

I rang you up too. Yes. That's not my forte.

Richard Robinson (03:44):

And then we thought about that for a while. I said, look, the whole point of this SFAIRP business is not to be online unless you need to be. And it's not as though we didn't have certain things online that we wanted. Like our CRM, our booking scheduling system is Canadian software. I have no idea where the server is. It could be in Australia, it could be in Canada. And our accounting package is actually Kiwi. We still actually run that on a server, but it doesn't have to be. It could be on the cloud and we'll probably do that in the near future because the server is so old now. But all our secure data, our client data, we said, well, look...

Gaye Francis (04:20):

Internal.

Richard Robinson (04:21):

..the laptops, we have two terabytes of storage on our laptops, which is absolutely unbelievable. And obviously we only have about a terabyte of actual secure client R2A data. And if you use Apple encryption, it's ... Well, I've no doubt that American government's probably got a backdoor into it, and I may imagine the Australian government can too, but if somebody's seriously about getting into our system, well, if they got one of our laptops, they probably could, but normal mortals can't. That part's pretty clear. And then basically in our office, what we do is we don't bother having a server anymore. We just have an encrypted hard drive to which we log on and back up when we're in the office. And if one of us needs something, we then send a file around. But that basically means our client data isn't online ever, except when we're online doing something, but then somebody's got to get through the Apple encryption to get to it anyway.

(05:12):

Now, but that's still focusing on the, from our point of view, the elimination option. Now, what's sort of happened the way the world's gone with, and you're talking about your daughters and how everyone's commenting online. I think that's actually going to be the subject of our next podcast in particular, the public sphere and what's happening to it in information terms. But the obvious way, if you want to be secure...

Gaye Francis (05:36):

And keep your kids safe is not to be online.

Richard Robinson (05:38):

Not to be online. And basically that's where we're trying to head. Now, the whole world is trying to prevent you from doing this. We try to buy Office, Word and Excel and all that sort of stuff on a standalone basis.

Gaye Francis (05:52):

Correct.

Richard Robinson (05:52):

Which we've done.

(05:54):

But we keep buying it that way.

Gaye Francis (05:56):

But you keep getting these messages to automatically update and log into Google.

Richard Robinson (06:00):

As soon as you log in and you put on an application now, if anything goes off and checks to see if you're legit and all the rest of it. And the way AI has gone, if you want information, it's forcing you to be online continuously and from a SFAIRP security point of view...

Gaye Francis (06:16):

An elimination option...

Richard Robinson (06:18):

That's dumb.

Gaye Francis (06:19):

Yeah.

Richard Robinson (06:20):

And I think a lot of people have started to recognise this and trying to get themselves back offline because if you look at the comments about Microsoft forcing you to 365 and continuous logons, there's a lot of narky people out there. You're not just the only one. There's a lot of narky people out there. And the way in which the different universes and the Apple and Google and everybody else, they're trying to get you into the universe and keep you there. I mean, that's what the AI is doing in effect because I think we're talking about it time before that you can't rely on AI to give you the right <information>. Well, what seems to be happening is that AI is hallucinating basically, and it's partly because the AI people, I think ChatGTP, I forget what version they're up to, but the AI that's going to win commercially is the one that gets the most questions.

(07:09):

And so they set the AI up to give you the answers you want.

Gaye Francis (07:13):

So you keep asking the questions.

Richard Robinson (07:14):

So you keep asking the question the way they want and you get happy about it. It's a bit like the podcasters, you keep getting the information that you search and the algorithm keeps giving you to podcasters that tell you what you want to know.

Gaye Francis (07:27):

Look, as people that have had AI spit out our name a couple of times, we were doing a course last week and somebody said they put a question in and R2A came up in that AI summary, it makes you feel quite good.

Richard Robinson (07:40):

Well, I did one last week too, and I got the same thing. What I couldn't work out was if it knew I was R2A, so it was giving me what I wanted to see.

Gaye Francis (07:47):

Possibly.

Richard Robinson (07:49):

And that's why when they're saying that the AIs are hallucinating, because it's basically saying, well, I've seen this person before, they belong to this, what do they want to hear? And the AI then serving are what you want and creating false references and basically reinforcing what you want to know. So it's not giving you truth, it's just giving you what you want to hear. So if you're talking about getting into a bubble, it's getting worse and worse. So I mean, according to <Patrick Boyle, podcaster>, they were talking about it's gone up from, I think in 2024 is about 10% of the answers could be hallucinations and last years, and it was getting up to 40% in some cases.

Gaye Francis (08:25):

Wow, that's a big jump.

Richard Robinson (08:25):

That's a big jump. Now, if the AI that succeeds is the one that gets the money, and that's why they're all pushing it so hard, they've got to get you into their ecosphere and they've got to hold you there. So they're really driving this hard. But that sort of then flows onto the question, I think that was going to be our next podcast onto the public sphere and risk in the public sphere and how it all works and what's going to happen there. But in the meantime, and I've got to say, our journey getting to try to stay off the internet, I mean, I think I've commented to you a couple of times, I'm going to go with a simpler phone in future. Once I don't need use the CRM that's Apple orientated, and I'll probably get rid of the Apple watch and just go on a nice mechanical one again and generally simplify my life.

Gaye Francis (09:09):

You reckon that there's a market for Nokia phones from the 1990s to come back and in fashion.

Richard Robinson (09:14):

Nokia phones is back because Microsoft sold them back after losing six million to the Fins.

Gaye Francis (09:21):

Look, and I think that comes back down to the topic of this particular podcast season is SFAIRP the moral imperative versus the commercial reality. And maybe it's not just commercial reality, it's sort of world reality, isn't it? But SFAIRP is trying to simplify the complexities that come with the world that we find ourselves in at the moment.

Richard Robinson (09:41):

Well, your problem with your daughters, which they're desperate to be online continuously.

Gaye Francis (09:45):

They are desperate to be online continuously. And I'm the worst mum in the world and the only mom in the world that doesn't allow it.

Richard Robinson (09:51):

And you're trying to get them offline as much as you can. You and your SFAIRP principles.

Gaye Francis (09:56):

I am. But it's tricky to navigate that and to balance it in the world that we live in and organisations are having that same <problem> like we had. You have to be online to do business, but to be secure, you have to be offline. So what is the balance and what is reasonable in the circumstances?

Richard Robinson (10:16):

Well, what we've basically landed on, not necessarily due to great design processes, I guess.

Gaye Francis (10:23):

Or management.

Richard Robinson (10:24):

Is that you keep anything that's really secure offline as much as you can, and you only go online when you need it ... We want to be able to do your work without being online.

Gaye Francis (10:41):

Yes. So I think it's ours is we're the confusing people because we're sort of intermittent, aren't we, online?

Richard Robinson (10:47):

Well, that's right.

Gaye Francis (10:47):

We're really unpredictable when you can come and hack us. Whereas if you're online continuously there's the opportunity.

Richard Robinson (10:54):

You're the target. Whereas we've flashing it out. And so if somebody's trying to keep track of us, we're making a lot harder work for them. I can't say they wouldn't do it, but it's a lot harder than it used to be.

Gaye Francis (11:04):

I don't know that that was a planned mechanism.

Richard Robinson (11:07):

Well, no, I think we actually thought about it because when we come into the office, we turn our internet on, otherwise the internet's off.

Gaye Francis (11:12):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (11:13):

So the office internet only shows up every week or two days a week at the most probably when we're actually in the office together. And at home, I mean, when I flip my laptop on, it's on. And then when I close it up again, it's off. So I'm intermittent. The only inserver I still have is our financial server, and the internet number and that changes enough to confuse everybody anyway.

Gaye Francis (11:42):

Well, I think on that note, what we wanted to show you today was that we're using the SFAIRP principle for a whole lot of things, and it can be a useful tool, not just for WHS and work health and safety.

Richard Robinson (11:56):

Well, it can cause some difficulties with daughters.

Gaye Francis (11:58):

It can cause some difficulty with daughters, but I'm happy to navigate those. So thank you for joining us today, and we're going to come back with part two on the public sphere. Thanks everyone.

Richard Robinson (12:11):

Thanks.

Breaking SFAIRP down to three parts: So Far (SF). As Is (AI). Reasonably Practicable (RP)

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 6, Episode 8

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis break down the concept of SFAIRP "So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable" into three key parts: "So Far", "As Is", and "Reasonably Practicable".

This was one of their key take-aways from their recent Live Forum where lawyer Joseph Coleiro articulated the following:

• "So Far" refers to the notion of doing as much as possible to address a risk, rather than just meeting a target level of risk.

• "As Is" refers to the information and circumstances available at the time a decision is made, rather than considering hindsight.

• "Reasonably Practicable" is defined in legislation, considering the likelihood and degree of harm, what is known about the risk, the availability and suitability of controls, and the cost associated with implementing those controls.

The discussion details a legal case where an organisation was prosecuted for failing to implement various risk controls, demonstrating that negligence often arises from unimplemented, insufficient, or failed precautions.

Overall, the key is to break down SFAIRP into these three distinct elements and to not leave out any part, especially when it is fully defined in the Legislation or Act.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robertson and Gaye Francis discuss the concept of breaking SFAIRP into three parts: So far. As is. Reasonably practicable.

(00:18):

We hope you enjoy the chat. If you do, please give us a rating and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. And if you'd like more information on R2A's work or have any feedback or topic ideas, head to the website www.r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:35):

Good morning Richard. Welcome to a podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:38):

Good morning, Gaye. It's strange to be recording a podcast online in remote locations. We don't do this very often.

Gaye Francis (00:43):

I was just going to say... Yes, today's podcast looks a little bit different. So we will see how it goes from here. So today we're going to talk about breaking SFAIRP down, and this really comes from probably the key insight that we got from our live forum that we had recently from Joseph Coleiro, the lawyer who we invited to the session. And I think for me that was one of the key takeaways from that session. And he broke SFAIRP down into three bits: SF So Far, and then As Is, AI, and then Reasonably Practicable, RP. And we're just going to go through each of those elements today and see if we can explain that in a little bit more detail.

Richard Robinson (01:32):

So you'd like me to explain that?

Gaye Francis (01:33):

Do you want to start And I'll add as I go along.

Richard Robinson (01:37):

Well, in Joe's presentation he made the point that "So Far" does that mean as low or any other term that you might choose to use? And the real question is, and the example we normally sort of give, if you're flying at 30,000 feet and something goes wrong and you're possibly going to fall out of the sky, it doesn't really help too much if the pilot comes and said, yes, we actually achieved our target level of risk and safety. (And) we do realise there was more we could have done on the way down, but we didn't do it because we didn't think it was necessary, because we couldn't afford it, for example. Or some other sort of decision. The idea is you're supposed to actually do "so far" -- as much as you can.

Gaye Francis (02:18):

He sort of used the words that you drill down as far as you can go.

Richard Robinson (02:21):

Yeah, that's right. "As Is", well that is at the time that you make the decision. And part of the reason why we're particularly interested in that... I've got to give a course in Latrobe Valley to one of the power stations down there. So I thought I'd go and look up that. I don't know if everyone remembers, there was a fire in the open cut pit down there and they were prosecuted under the OHS Act in Victoria and the So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable. And when I was just looking up the prosecution from the Victorian WorkCover authority alleges under the relevant section of that Act that So Far As Was Reasonably Practicable, meaning at the time the decision was made. So before the event, it is So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable. And after the event it was So Far As Was Reasonably Practicable, meaning the is part is actually quite important. And you and I both commented that a lot of people leave the "I" out when they actually just sort of put the proposition up, where in fact once the lawyers start using the term, it's actually quite important.

Gaye Francis (03:22):

I think that was one of the key things also that came out of the event. There was some discussion that courts use hindsight to decide what was reasonably practicable in the stages, but that "is", "As Is", really says that hindsight is not considered. It is what the information that you have at the time and the decision you made at the time what was reasonably practicable then.

Richard Robinson (03:45):

Yeah, that's right. And that's popped up a number of times because what's always puzzling to us, you see from the point of view of being an expert witness after the event, the thing's gone wrong, so you're trying to dream up what could have been done if it had been done "was reasonable" and then the court looks at what the experts said and then tries to determine whether those things that were thought up by the experts with the advantage of hindsight were reasonable without that hindsight that they ought to have been thought about prior to the event. I still find it very difficult to believe that post-event doesn't have some influence on the decision making of the court, but I'm not obviously in the position to comment on that particularly.

Gaye Francis (04:23):

That's true. And then "Reasonably Practicable" is sort of what's written in the legislation under Section 18. And so that has five elements: The likelihood of the hazard or the risk concerned occurring. The degree of harm that might result from that hazard or risk. What the person concerned, knows or ought reasonably to know about the hazard or the risk. The ways of eliminating or minimising the risk, the availability and suitability of ways to eliminate or minimise the risk. And after assessing the extent of the risk and the available ways of eliminating or minimising the risk, the cost associated with available ways of doing that. But again, cost comes down to that grossly disproportionate tests that it goes by, it's not just: Oh it's expensive so we're not going to do it. You've actually got to consider it grossly disproportionate.

Richard Robinson (05:14):

Well it was interesting, as I said, I was just looking at this case because they actually were prosecuted for 14 charges originally and they got, I think, successfully the case was won on five charges. Perhaps I might just read them out because it's kind of interesting to sort see what they're actually talking about. I suppose the other point just to note is that when they were prosecuted, it was done not for two parts under Section 21 that an employer must So Far As Reasonably Practicable provide maintain employees of the employer with a working environment that is safe and without risks to health. But then Section 23, the Victorian Act also says an employee must ensure so Far As Reasonably Practicable the persons other than employees of the employer not exposed. So it was not only the people who work there, it was the community as a whole. And I think that's part of the reasons why the prosecution was taken and that they were prosecuted under two pieces of legislation, both the OHS Act and the environmental legislation and it was trial by jury and they were successfully...

Gaye Francis (06:20):

Convicted

Richard Robinson (06:22):

For five points. I'll just go through them: Failing to perform an adequate risk assessment as to the possibility of fire from an external source. Failing to have adequate reticulated water supply. Failing to slash vegetation on the face of the northern batters. Failing to begin wetting down on the northern batters on the really hot day. And failing to maintain staffing on the mine of sufficient numbers and expertise to supress fires in a hurry. Yeah, well sure, I suppose.

Gaye Francis (06:50):

I think one of the interesting things about that is, and we say this in our courses, negligence arises because of unimplemented, insufficient or failed precautions or controls and three of those were failed controls.

Richard Robinson (07:05):

Yeah, that's right.

Gaye Francis (07:07):

So they were things that they should have been doing that they weren't doing well enough to protect them on the day of the fire. And I think that's really interesting that that's what they've gone down for.

Richard Robinson (07:19):

Well other thing was that the judge lists a whole lot of previous decisions made in different cases and sort of says quotes, relevant things and I just going through the matter curiosity and just the way one or the other judges when they were expressing the way in which you meant to go about this stuff. Hence in determining the gravity or seriousness of the defence, as in such a case, the gravity or seriousness of a breach is to be measured by reference to the potential consequences of the breach. Which is rather interesting isn't it? Because remember how we always do it, so what's the credible worst case? And then we went backwards from there.

Gaye Francis (07:51):

It's consequence basis. It doesn't actually consider the likelihood.

Richard Robinson (07:56):

In the first instance. That's our perception of it. And that's the way we've always done it. And that's what we had interpreted from our experience as expert witnesses, that it's really the extent of the consequences that what you need to assess in the first instance and then you do the likelihood versus the balance, the significance, the risk versus the effort required to reduce it, sort of comes second.

Gaye Francis (08:18):

When you're weighing up what the controls that you could put in place. So that's helping you with your reasonableness part, isn't it?

Richard Robinson (08:24):

Correct. And that's just what I was just reading, I thought well that's interesting because I mean we find it for the most part we get given cases to review and as I said, I'm giving this course at Latrobe Valley in a couple of weeks and I thought I better go and have a look to see what actually happened there because I suspect everyone down there probably knows all about it and having an opinion or review or some insight into it might be really rather useful.

Gaye Francis (08:49):

But I also think that it played on and it sort of crystallised and supported what Joe was saying during the forum that SFAIRP is broken into those three elements that we talked about: "So Far" -- as far as you can absolutely go. And it's not the same as all of those other definitions that we talked about.

Richard Robinson (09:12):

Yes.

Gaye Francis (09:12):

"As Is" -- at the time. And then "Reasonably Practicable" -- is as defined in the Work Health and Safety legislation or OHS legislation in Victoria. So if you break it into those three, as we sort of said earlier in this podcast, leaving there "Is" out or the "I" out has implications because it's sort of saying, well, it's not at the time that the decision was made. Now our understanding is that most people think that that's inferred or the intent is remains in there of is. But it's often left out.

Richard Robinson (09:56):

Well the defense leave the I out when they talk about SFAIRP. And one of the things that mystified me a bit was that the environmental legislation of Victoria has been modified to adopt what we had, I think we've said it before, the SFAIRP principle, but in that particular Act it leaves the "I" out. It just has SFARP - So Far As Reasonably Practicable, not As Is Reasonably Practicable. And this is part of our experience with lawyers. One word makes a difference.

Gaye Francis (10:21):

Yes. So if you don't think it's significant then you just have to be careful of this and you don't want to be the test case to see whether leaving the "Is" out of your terminology has implications.

Richard Robinson (10:38):

Well I think the other point too is the important thing is if the Act says SFAIRP (with) "AI" then use "AI". If it doesn't say then possibly leave it out because I dunno, I think it's going to be a matter for another podcast. But one of the things that also popped up in our live forum was that one of the things that seems to happen is sometimes people delay decisions about something until it's so late. So what's SFAIRP early in the process can't get up. And that's a difficult one and I haven't thought that one through how you meant to address that one. I think that's definitely another podcast.

Gaye Francis (11:16):

No, absolutely right then and that's tricky. But I think that was the other key that came out of the forum, wasn't it? The legislation. And this is what we say to our clients, if the legislation uses So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable, SFAIRP, then make sure that that's what your policies and procedures and company "how to" manuals actually address and use.

Richard Robinson (11:42):

And that's why you've got to be wary of the Risk Management Standard, for just that reason.

Gaye Francis (11:46):

So these (advice) that says some of these terminologies are interchangeable, we would just say be careful when you do that because our understanding is that they're not interchangeable.

Richard Robinson (11:59):

That was the advice that Joseph Coleiro explained to us. He said if the legislation says it a certain way, then that's the way and to which you will be tested. Which so far as they can tell is precisely what happened with that bushfire risk matter.

Gaye Francis (12:13):

So I think that's all we really want to say on that, but that was one of the key takeaways. Break SFAIRP into the three categories, three parts. So Far, drill down as far as you can go. As Is, what you know at the time. And, Reasonably Practicable as defined in the legislation under Section 18.

Richard Robinson (12:34):

And that's why I think our recommendation that you run SFAIRP workshops is so important because, and who's in the room when you make that decision, because that's testing what you know at the time -- those three elements.

Gaye Francis (12:47):

Especially the "As Is".

Richard Robinson (12:49):

Especially the As Is part, which is not something I think we previously thought of.

Gaye Francis (12:53):

No.

Richard Robinson (12:53):

I think we understood it, but I don't know we'd ever focused on it in any particular way.

Gaye Francis (12:56):

I don't think we'd articulated it in the same way. So that was a very helpful articulation. So we hope our audience has also found that articulation useful and we look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks Richard.

Richard Robinson (13:08):

Thanks Gaye.

How organisational silos impact due diligence across safety, projects & compliance

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 5, Episode 8

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis tackle the growing problem of organisational silos and their impact on due diligence and explore how siloed thinking undermines efforts across various domains—from safety, projects and regulatory compliance.

Drawing from decades of industry experience, Richard traces the evolution of risk engineering. They then discuss the need for integrating expertise across the entire organisation to achieve genuinely diligent solutions that satisfy all stakeholders.

Through real-world examples including waterfront safety designs in New Zealand and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, they demonstrate how breaking down silos leads to better outcomes. 

They also emphasise that while the R2A due diligence process isn't "rocket science," it requires structured thinking and inclusive facilitation to bring disparate perspectives together.

This episode refers to their previous discussion about being "relevant, reasoned and concise" (S5 Ep7), offering practical insights on how organisations can overcome the silo mentality to demonstrate due diligence across all operations.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss silos, the due diligence difficulties and how they deal with siloed competing interests.

(00:17):

We hope you enjoy the chat. If you do, please give us a rating and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you'd like more information on R2A's work or have any feedback or topic ideas, please head to the website www.r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:35):

Hi Richard.

Richard Robinson (00:37):

Hello Gaye. Back again.

Gaye Francis (00:38):

We are back again. Today we're going to talk about silos and the difficulty that we've seen with silos over the last little while.

Richard Robinson (00:49):

And how we deal with silos.

Gaye Francis (00:50):

And how we deal with silos. I think they've been separating out more recently into different categories, and I guess that it's very difficult to come to a due diligence solution or answer when everybody's doing things in silos.

Richard Robinson (01:09):

I think that's correct, and I think that's one of the reasons why on our last podcast (S5 Ep7) we were talking about that we need to be relevant, reasoned and concise. But when you're split into silos, everybody tries to make a justifed course of action from their own silo, you suddenly have all these competing interests and whatever you get when you consolidate it is usually a mess and rather scrappy.

Gaye Francis (01:31):

And I guess we can just say that we've seen this in a whole lot of applications. It's not just in safety, it's in projects, it's in SIL ratings, it's in a whole lot of things.

Richard Robinson (01:40):

Well, again it flows on from some of the other discussions we've had about the way in which the history of these things actually was created. I mean, now I'm actually going past and talking about how long I've been in this business, but the Risk Engineering Society of Engineers Australia originally started as the loss control section of the management branch of the Victorian division of Engineers Australia by a whole bunch of ex Factory Mutual engineers, of which I was one of them. Factory Mutual's based in Melbourne, that's why there was a collection of them in this location. Right.

(02:10):

Actually, it was actually rather close actually, the vote, because I do remember the vote as to whether or not it should be part of Engineers Australia because there's actually an argument to say that it shouldn't be. And as I said, it started as the loss control section, which in a sense was perhaps more allied to the insurance industry than to engineers per se. But then one of my former business partners, Derek Viner, dreamed up the idea of calling the risk engineers following on from Factory Mutual HPR, highly protected risk engineering, as a concept. And that was something that just flashed around the planet in a most extraordinary speed. Everybody became risk engineers all over the planet. It was something that I was completely astonished about. But anyway, that's what sort of happened.

(02:51):

But anyway, time went on and then rather than risk being a generic thing, which is what we were trying to do and from a Common Law viewpoint and from the point of view of what we then just thought was where the WHS legislation was going; this overarching thing dealing with the subject of risk. You might recall, we tried to convince the Risk Engineering Society to change its name to the Due Diligence Society, which hasn't been a success.

Gaye Francis (03:15):

No, we were unsuccessful in that attempt.

Richard Robinson (03:19):

But then the Fire Engineering Society of Engineers Australia appeared and it sort of hired off that part of what we had considered to be an integrated aspect of risk to somewhere else. It certainly confused perhaps some Factory Mutual type HPR engineers because fires and explosions is what Factory Mutual was focused on. I mean, the whole point of BLEVE is Boiling Liquid Expanding Vaporcloud Explosions, that was the term dreamed up by Factory Mutual researchers in the 1950s & 1960s I recall, because that's what I got fed in the 1970s, the late seventies. So yes, I have been around for a long time.

(03:53):

What got us completely stumped and this subdivision into silos of activity that's been preceding at pace because just think of Registration of Engineers and the fire engineers that are in their own little group. And yet as we've sort of been explaining, if you just look at that in isolation, you get completely confused. And Frank Stocks, our New Zealand associate, he's just been doing expert witness matter for some fellow who went over the edge at one of the harbors and drowned. And he'd been giving advice to various councils on this sort of thing. He's an architect actually, but he has a PhD in accepted crime prevention through environmental design. And his point has been, and that's where he's just been given this expert witness stuff and the coroner New Zealand and the provisions of the WSHA in their case apply, that to do and just make a decision on a silo, it doesn't make sense. You've got to have all the parties there.

(04:44):

For example, one of the things that Kiwis (NZ) really do like is their waterfronts and it's part of their social environment, and they don't want to have great fences areas stopping people falling over the edge. And yet obviously there's a danger there, particularly with kids. And Frank was sort of saying, well, what you've got to do is get all the relevant experts together, the people who want to make sure the access is maintained to the waterfront and so forth. So, where there's a bar, you can have a glass wall there with a glass top on it, proper plain glass, so it's not going to shatter and so people can have a drink and look at the water and admire things, and in another place you might do other treatments. And yes, the risk levels might change in one way, but what you need is an integrated solution that satisfies all the competing interests in a way that demonstrates due diligence and you won't be getting a constant level of risk all over the place because that's just not the nature of the thing. But you will have demonstrated due diligence all over the place, which is what the purpose is.

Gaye Francis (05:35):

But you won't get that solution if you keep thinking about it in silos.

Richard Robinson (05:39):

No. And using target levels of risk and safety, for example, you will be completely confused.

Gaye Francis (05:44):

So the key is to get the due diligence argument, you really need to bring those silos together. And we've seen it a lot in projects as well. Often somebody's got an idea and management do it, but they haven't talked to necessarily the operations or the maintenance staff of how it's going to be done. And so things are promised and done in isolation without considering all of the key parties and then trying to bring it back together is quite difficult.

Richard Robinson (06:12):

Well, and that's actually what we wind up doing. If you sort say what's a due engineer do? Well, in a way, you're making sure that the silos get back together again. So the decision that's made and the way it's presented is diligent for the whole organisation and all the players, including anybody who's actually exposed to the risk itself. I mean, one of the reasons why we're not RPEQ or RPV, the registrant being a registered engineer in Queensland or Victoria, is because what we do does not require it. We've talked about this a number of cases like RPEQ. And it's like the example we gave of the one our previous recently was about the fire engineers and things like that. We're setting up the argument of the WHS legislation as to why something needs to be done. And then that design is implemented and signed off by the relevant design engineer.

Gaye Francis (07:00):

With the support of all of the key stakeholders and all of the different silos.

Richard Robinson (07:04):

Which means the fire engineers are grateful for the answer, but there's no point in us being registered because what are we, there's no such registration for due diligence engineers.

Gaye Francis (07:14):

No, no. Well, we always said that a large part of our job is that facilitation process and communication process and bringing due process to things so that those arguments can be had in a constructive manner.

Richard Robinson (07:30):

And the way we do it, I mean, I guess it sort of puzzles me. It's not as though we do anything, which is astounding in the sense of the process. You go and talk to all the other parties, pick the core ideas, put it together in sort of some simplified form, and then run a workshop and test it with everybody. This is not rocket science.

Gaye Francis (07:49):

It's not rocket science, but you have to have a considered way of thinking about things and a structured process to go through.

Richard Robinson (07:57):

I tell a lie there. actually. The reason why one of the space shuttle blew up was because the O-rings got wrong. And if they'd actually done what we'd said... The problem was they had two O-rings, but they'd never launched when it was cold, and they didn't really know how the O-rings would perform. And the only reason why they had to have the O-rings is because they had to spread the manufacturing out across America, and if they'd manufactured it close to where the rockets were, they would've manufactured a single integrated without the need to join the bits together and have the O-rings. So not only did they fail to eliminate the hazard, they also then said, we've never had an O-ring fail. We've got two, so we've got backup. But the engineers were saying, you've never launched when it was this cold (and) we don't know what the performance of the O-rings will be in that condition. So yes, due diligence would've addressed it, and to very great extent the Americans set themselves up for the fall by the silos that they'd been creating.

Gaye Francis (08:53):

I also think you just set up potentially another podcast about quality assurance and the ability to test challenge and question.

Richard Robinson (09:02):

Yeah, probably.

Gaye Francis (09:05):

Just going back to that silo thing, we have seen a lot of organisations break out into silos and try and solve the issue of concern within those silos.

Richard Robinson (09:17):

But the reason why it drives this crackers, it's a bit like the safety function, break it out and putting a safety specialist over there and not recognise that risk management's a line management function, it just sets you up for a fall.

Gaye Francis (09:27):

Yeah, well, it should almost be all business as usual stuff, isn't it integrated into the whole of business. But what we say is that the due diligence process and demonstrating SFAIRP does get you over that silo and people having their own views on things in their own silos - it (all) has to be integrated.

Richard Robinson (09:47):

Yep.

Gaye Francis (09:49):

So we hope you found that interesting. Thank you for joining us today, Richard, and we will see you next time.

Richard Robinson (09:54):

Thanks, Gaye.

Due Diligence in the Electrical & Power Industry

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 4, Episode 8

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss due diligence in the electrical and power industry.

They discuss due diligence and risk management considerations in the sector, with examples that focus on renewable energy sources like wind turbines and the potential role of nuclear power in Australia's energy mix. Key points include:

• The need to carefully assess and document the safety and emergency protocols even for foreseeable events like fires.

• The trade-offs involved in designing effective systems which can sometimes introduce new risks.

• The challenges of transitioning to a more distributed, renewable-heavy electrical grid, including the need for reliable baseload power and the shifting seasonal demand patterns in Australia.

• The thorough, "cradle-to-grave" approach taken by Finland in developing nuclear power, which may serve as a model for Australia.

• The difficulty of developing a coherent, long-term national energy policy due to the political complexities involved.

The full episode on Nuclear Power is Episode 9, Season 2 of this podcast.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss due diligence in the electrical and power industry.

(00:13):

We hope you enjoy their chat. If you do, please give us a rating and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you'd like more information on R2A's work or have any feedback or topic ideas, please head to the website www.r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:32):

Hi Richard, welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:35):

Morning Gaye. We're quite surprised how many people are listening to our podcasts too, aren't we?

Gaye Francis (00:39):

Pleasantly surprised. Absolutely.

(00:42):

Today we're going to talk about the electricity industry and do one of our industry related podcasts. And I guess the reason for doing it is we have just been appointed on to the Energy Safe Victoria panel to assess safety arguments or safety cases from the different power utilities. And also the timeliness around the discussion around wind turbines and particularly the wind turbine fire that happened down in Portland, I think it was the 30th of June this 2024. So that was sort of our introduction. We've got a couple of other case studies that we can talk through that we've worked on at R2A, just to show you the breadth of the different types of work that we do in the electrical industry. But I guess if we start with the turbine fire, Richard, and go from there.

Richard Robinson (01:35):

Well, I can't actually remember what we we were going to say about it Gaye because I remember we were surprised at the time about it because it did surprise us. I mean obviously these things are foreseeable. There will be turbine fires, there's nothing remarkable about that. And the question that became how it was managed electrically, I presume the think was instantly isolated.

Gaye Francis (01:52):

Correct.

Richard Robinson (01:53):

And then whether or not there was proper fire suppression systems or it was just allowed to burn out. I mean obviously if it happened on a catastrophic (fire warning) day and it was dropping sparks and things around that could be fairly complicated

Gaye Francis (02:03):

Rather than in the middle of winter. My understanding was, and I think that's where the discussion is going in the investigation, should fire protection be put on wind turbines? So they did allow it to just basically burn out, but one of the turbine blades fell off. And as you said, if that was a catastrophic day and all of the grass around it was very, very dry then would that have started a fire? It did start a small grass fire, but the consequences weren't there at the time.

Richard Robinson (02:32):

Well, this sort of flowed onto the fact that I'm still acting as an Expert Witness for the Cuddlee Creek fire in South Australia before the Supreme Court, which is a class action. Now I obviously can't talk too much about it, but I think what was interesting, I wasn't asked by the respective lawyers to what I thought the decision that ought to be made. What I was asked to do was go through the process by which they came to the decision. And I think that's what all this due diligence stuff is about, which is what we hammer: precaution due diligence. You can't always be right. That's one of the points the courts understand. But what you can do is be diligent all the time and diligence means that you thought the thing through and you came to a reasonable basis. So it's a bit like whether or not this thing should have had fire protection systems installed because you can install fixed fire protection systems on remote devices like engines on aircraft, always have extinguishing systems built into them. You can buy different technologies. The Russians, for example, used to use a form of halon on which put out fires particularly well but wasn't very good for people. So you wouldn't want to be around when the system went off where other designs like Halon 1301, they could release it inside a computer room at the concentration that would extinguish a fire, but it wouldn't extinguish the people, which is nice and was good. But it wasn't quite as effective as the other halon stuff that the Russians were using as just extinguishing fires.

Gaye Francis (03:55):

But that comes down to that balance, doesn't it? What is the risk and then what other things does it introduce potentially.

Richard Robinson (04:01):

Correct. And you'll be aware we did that other job, which perhaps I shouldn't speak about, fire protection on vessels, and they had a gaseous extinguishing system, which if it got too hot, converted a number of the products of combustion to hydrogen fluoride, which basically would go through anybody's PPE, including the people trying to put the fire out, which means in effect if the fire got hot enough, you really had to abandon ship anyway.

Gaye Francis (04:24):

Yeah, just let it go.

Richard Robinson (04:25):

And so the fire control system in some ways created a greater hazard than the fire itself, which is obviously problematic and there's something you should really try to avoid.

Gaye Francis (04:34):

So I guess going back to the turbine fire, it's not about necessarily what was or wasn't in place. It's really the process that the operator went through to decide on what their emergency protocols were and what they did have in place. And I always say to our clients, I think sometimes it's even more important to document why you're not going to do something as to why you think it's unreasonable.

Richard Robinson (04:59):

Well, I'm completely certain it would've had thermocouples all over it, so they would've known it was getting hot. And maybe all you do if you think you've got a problem like that is you just turn it to side, feather the blades and just turn it off and isolate it from the network so there's no further power going into it and it can't possibly, you'd expect at that point everything would go inert.

Gaye Francis (05:18):

So before the fire actually started it just gets hot. You think that was an option?

Richard Robinson (05:21):

Well, that's the mechanism. That's part of the question was what's reasonable in the circumstances, how would you know? Anyway. Now that sort of led onto a rather interesting discussion about power networks and I don't know if anybody's aware, but there's sort of an interesting philosophical argument going on Engineers Australia about nuclear power and whether or not nuclear experts should be addressing the question. Now we're kind of... Gaye, because she spent all this time in Finland and the Fins are very keen on nuclear power obviously because they don't have much sun in winter.

Gaye Francis (05:51):

No. And they didn't want to rely on gas from Russia.

Richard Robinson (05:54):

So there are very good reasons for going with nuclear power.

Gaye Francis (05:57):

Correct.

Richard Robinson (05:59):

And the way they go about it is particularly thorough. Now we've talked about this previously, but they don't until they're completely happy to say if they won't turn it on, they're very thorough people.

Gaye Francis (06:08):

I think the last reactor that was added to the Olkiluoto system was 20 years in the making just to get all of everything right and they were comfortable with the safety of it.

Richard Robinson (06:22):

Well see, what's strange about this is, I mean I'm just reading a couple of things and roughly now, last time I looked at some reports about this, Australia's about 45% renewables at the moment, but in the last year, I think twice the renewables have actually been generating a 100% of power. So the need for base load thermal power stations has declined. Now what's really curious about this is when you look at all this sort of stuff is that once upon a time we used to define what we required for power by the maximum load, which was winter, which is when thermal power stations are at their best when you've got the cold weather for the chillers and obviously heating and burning water to get the energy out of it. Now, thermal power stations are at best around about 30% efficiency just like cars in terms of the energy you get out of the fuel and converting to electricity. They're quite low efficiency. And most of our thermal power stations in Australia are aging badly. But the question is what happens with the renewables? Obviously when the sun's shining and in summer, particularly, we get a lot of surplus power.

(07:20):

And what changed though in Australia was that once upon a time, peak load was winter when we're trying to keep warm and now it's flipped around to air conditioners trying to keep us cool. And so you've got this whole paradigm shift in the way in which you're thinking about how power is generated and how you're trying to consume it. And the entire network was never designed for that kind of distributed generation as opposed to centralised generation. And I have to agree on all the politics of this sort of thing that you're going to need some reliable base load because remember when you're trying to restart, we did the black start restarts in New Zealand, you need, they're relying on hydro. You need a nice...

Gaye Francis (08:01):

Stable and reliable base load to be able to do that.

Richard Robinson (08:04):

Base load and generator and then you can start building the network back once you've blacked out. Now from my point of view, we are just a bunch of engineers discussing this, trying to work out what might be a way forward. But the question of nuclear power otherwise, but having a stable nuclear generator somewhere wouldn't actually, as opposed to building coal fired power stations because building coal fired power station, getting the coal out of the ground is quite a dangerous occupation. There's a horrendous lead time for a thermal power station just like a nuclear reactor. And the Fins, if we adopt the finished method of making nuclear power safe, maybe that's what we ought to do or hire us some Fins.

Gaye Francis (08:43):

They do some cradle to grave stuff, they take it all the way through.

Richard Robinson (08:47):

Well, they actually dispose of their own nuclear waste too.

Gaye Francis (08:49):

They do. Correct.

Richard Robinson (08:50):

Unlike we've failed that test miserably in Australia, haven't we?

Gaye Francis (08:54):

The power plant, my understanding is the power plant doesn't get approved until, as I said, the cradle to grave and the burial of the spent fuel rods has been addressed.

Richard Robinson (09:05):

So they actually competently think it through, which I don't see many other societies actually doing. So there's a whole lot of interesting issues here and you and I, we talk about these things, but we don't have a clear view on the matter (of nuclear in Australia).

Gaye Francis (09:18):

But I think what we've seen is in the power industry, what's required or what we're using it for and how it's being generated is changing. And it's sort of that strategic approach, isn't it, to an industry that you almost got to look that 20 to 30 to 40 years out, what does it look like? And then what do we need to achieve that? Whereas we keep creeping up on it and there's no head room left in the network.

Richard Robinson (09:47):

And one's pretty much gone so far as we can tell.

Gaye Francis (09:49):

Everything's aging. So we're sort of at a stage where things are starting to come crashing down, but we don't have an overall policy or framework to say this is what the best solution is or the optimum solution for either Australia or different parts of Australia, to say: And that's what we're all going to work towards. It's unfortunately very political and political timeframes, which when you're talking about those sort of projects that are five and 10 years out, certainly don't fit the political cycle.

Richard Robinson (10:21):

Well, you've heard my little story about my solar system on my roof, which when I put it on it was a pretty good return for the power I put into the grid, but just as it paid itself off, the inverter died and I had to replace that. Now they give us such little amount of money, the whole thing wasn't worth the trouble, let me put it that way.

Gaye Francis (10:38):

No, you only get the benefit from what you use.

Richard Robinson (10:41):

Well they don't do that anymore. They charge you for what you use and you get a little bit back for what you sell.

Gaye Francis (10:48):

Oh, that's really not a good deal, is it!

Richard Robinson (10:49):

It's not a good deal anymore.

Gaye Francis (10:53):

So it's really that precautionary approach. What do we want it to achieve? And I guess we've talked about it before, I think on one of our podcasts, but Richard and I were the risk management experts on the power line bushfire safety task force. And then I followed on the committee.

Richard Robinson (11:11):

This arose from the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday fires where it killed 173 Victorians.

Gaye Francis (11:19):

And they took on that precautionary approach and put in REFCLS (rapid earth fault current limiters), which...

Richard Robinson (11:26):

Ground fault neutralises for those who don't believe in REFCLS.

Gaye Francis (11:30):

Thank you, my technical brain. So they put those in and our understanding is that they've worked really well and where they've been installed, haven't started a bushfire in those particular areas.

Richard Robinson (11:44):

In the last, what would it be, six or seven years now?

Gaye Francis (11:46):

Six or seven years. Yeah.

Richard Robinson (11:48):

Although there were other problems.

Gaye Francis (11:50):

Yes, there was some hardening of network. And that comes back to that. What do you want your network to be? And it hasn't ever been designed to do those things. So you almost got to put a line in the sand: What do we want it to achieve? What will our current network get us to? And then what do we have to do to achieve the rest?

(12:10):

So that sort of brings us to the end of a very diverse discussion around the electricity industry, not a one size fits all solution for any of this, I don't think. But if you take the philosophy that Richard and I have always had that it's safety in design and designing for optimum outcomes. What do you want to achieve first? What are your options on the table and in the circumstances, which are the best?

Richard Robinson (12:40):

And the political fights we're having aren't helping.

Gaye Francis (12:43):

No.

Richard Robinson (12:44):

They would be on optimum that would work for Australia. And for some reason we seem to be politically unable to actually think it through.

Gaye Francis (12:50):

I think it has to be divided into two things though. It's what's the best technical solution for Australia. And then how do you get it through the politics of it? I mean, we've said this many times as a young engineer, you to always told me, it doesn't matter how technically right you are, you have to be on the political ball as well.

Richard Robinson (13:07):

Yep.

Gaye Francis (13:08):

So thank you for joining us and we hope you'll listen next time. Have a great day.

Richard Robinson (13:13):

Thank you.

How Standards stifle innovation

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 3, Episode 8

In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis from R2A discuss how standards stifle innovation. 

They highlight the frustration of engineers who are designing to standards rather than focusing on solving the actual problem at hand. They argue that standards are often lag indicators and may not keep up with the rapidly changing world and provide examples of how standards can lead to shortcuts being taken and hinder the adoption of new technologies. 

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss how standards stifle innovation. We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also, remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Get in touch via admin@r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:29):

Hi Richard, welcome to a podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:32):

Hello Gaye. We're back again.

Gaye Francis (00:33):

We are. Today we're going to talk about one of the things that gets us both a little bit riled up, and that's standards stifle innovation.

Richard Robinson (00:45):

Every time.

Gaye Francis (00:47):

And I guess this comes from a number of comments and questions we've been asked by chief engineers in organisations that engineers are designing to standards rather than looking at what the issue of concern is and designing to solve that problem, which is what engineers should do.

Richard Robinson (01:06):

Correct. And the standards come second, not first.

Gaye Francis (01:10):

So there's a lot of frustrations out there with technical based organisations and chief engineers that engineers are only designing to standards, not actually thinking through the application. It manifests itself in a number of different ways and difficulties arise because of it. And one of the things that we were just talking about is that standards are lag indicators. They've usually done retrospectively after something's happened.

Richard Robinson (01:36):

And you want to make sure that after you design something that you have certainly met what the standards demand. But normally that's the lowest possible framework, not where you ought to be, not what recognised good practice is.

Gaye Francis (01:50):

And the other difficulty, I think, is that the world is changing so fast and the standards aren't keeping up with that. And so sometimes standards are being applied to applications that are not relevant or haven't been considered by the standard. And that makes it difficult as well.

Richard Robinson (02:08):

Yeah. Well that keeps popping up. In my role as a chairman of an Owners Corporation with 271 apartments, it was done originally and renovated in at least in 1997, something like that, and a lot of the fire protection standards were actually substandard compared to what things are now. But I knew that at the time. I mean, I bought in to the apartments about 10 years later, but I was aware as a fire engineer at the time what the deficiencies were and what recognised good practice and the North American codes were. And so we have this horrible situation, the Australian Sprinkler Standard, for example, didn't demand a sprinkler for the bathrooms, which is just common sense that if you're going to sprinkle the place, you do it everywhere. But if you're just designed to a standard, you don't!

Gaye Francis (02:46):

It didn't have a requirement, so it wasn't done.

Richard Robinson (02:50):

It wasn't done.

Gaye Francis (02:51):

So I mean, shortcuts in a way are being taken. And I think the WHS/OHS legislation has changed that to a degree.

Richard Robinson (02:57):

To a degree, but people still aren't thinking it through.

Gaye Francis (03:00):

No, that's correct. And so today we thought we'd go through a couple of examples just to show why standards are lagging and they stifle innovation. And that probably gives the best example of what we're talking about.

Richard Robinson (03:14):

And we are talking about design standards more than anything else. I think we might've used this example somewhere else, but it actually, because of the technology's been moving along so fast, it actually become more and more relevant. Now, you'd be aware that the bane of electrical regulators in Australia is the home handyman, getting in the roof space fiddling with the wires and doing themselves in electrically. And you might recall we had a royal commission into installing installation where a young guy just basically stapled through the metal installation into the 240 volt wires and that was the end of them. Now this has been a pain. Now, even now, if somebody's building a house, what they're most likely to do is build it to AS 3000, which is, I've got to say, as standards go is one of the more authoritative ways of doing things. But it doesn't address particularly the issue of 240 volts in the roof space.

(04:01):

Now, this matter has been going on for some time. But the most recent design approach, particularly in industry, is to put power over ethernet to luminaires. And you can now get 25 watts, which is a very bright LED at 48 volts through power of ethernet. And because of all the other efficiencies and energy savings and so forth going on, monitoring every light fitting has become a sort of a trendy thing to do. Now if you wire a new house up with 48 volts, which is extra low voltage wiring, there's no possibility of somebody getting killed just from stapling or hacking around up there, it's not going to happen. Is that in AS 3000? No, it's not. Is it required now by WHS and in Victoria, the OHS Act? Absolutely.

(04:45):

And so if you haven't designed a house now to take this into account and somebody subsequently gets killed up there with a 240 volts when it can be shown absolutely crystal clear for no increase in cost, you could have engineered this out, then you have failed the design test because you're designed to a standard.

Gaye Francis (05:02):

I think the difficulty is that people aren't thinking about it that way, are they? They're still thinking that designing to the standard covers them to do that sort of stuff. And that's what we mean by standards stifle innovation. They're actually not thinking over what could be done and why wouldn't you do it?

Richard Robinson (05:20):

Well, that's right, but it's an interesting thing because you can't legislate for creativity. It's not the way the world works. It just doesn't function like that.

Gaye Francis (05:30):

No, it doesn't.

Richard Robinson (05:31):

The other example which we had because we're kind of sensitive to it, was the Wallan incident where the train driver and train pilot got killed. Now, I think we might've mentioned this before that R2A was the functional safety assessor under IEC 61508 for how two trains who get past each other electronically and single line track in New South Wales. And they had a near miss. And we said you need a diverse or independent way of confirming where the train is rather than just relying on the train driver talking to train control. And the way to do that was to use a GPS function and to have basically a GPS watch dog, which was eventually implemented. Although at the time this was non-standard and because it was the first job you did and you did entirely test it to confirm that every intersection, every crossing loop and everything that happened in New South Wales, the watchdog would work for, which is how we confirmed that it was a robust idea. But then they had generally two independent ways of doing things.

(06:26):

Now because we do a fair bit of work in marine pilotage, and this is a paper you gave to the CORE Conference just recently, an example. The marine pilots now have, and this is technology that's been developed particularly in the last 20 years, what they refer to as a personal pilotage unit. And the idea is the marine pilot gets on board the ship and whacks their own laptop or iPad effectively these days at the center of the bridge and then paces out the wing bridge and sticks up a GPS Bluetooth GPS connection. And that means that the laptop knows these days with the way all the satellite systems are working out there. So you'll be using the Russian system, the American system, the Indian system, the Japanese system. There are so many damn satellites up there now telling you where you are that this laptop knows the nearest centimeter where it is without any particular difficulty.

(07:14):

And the reason for doing this is if the ship goes black or a swell turns up and you can't see anything because the wind screens just got water all over it and the radar's gone on the blink because the radar can't get through. The Marine pilot has a completely, a utterly independent navigation system, utterly independent of the entire ship telling where they are, how fast they're going, what direction they're heading, and all the other aspects. And this technology has become blindingly, reliable, very small and very efficient. It begs the question, why don't interstate trains have this more particularly, why doesn't a trained pilot who's particularly there to navigate through the different networks for the state have this kind of device? Because this would tell you, for example, and give you a live real time messages on the state of the track ahead of you, which is what happened because they were doing some work on the track.

(08:06):

And yes, they had been advised before they left Sydney that there was work happening on the track and they'd have to slow down to a 10 or 15km/hr and take the crossing loop around where the work site was at a slow speed. They didn't. They hit the train, hit the work site, basically at line speed and derailed and the train drive and the pilot got killed. We have a view that if you had one of these units similar to what the marine pilots have, that the train pilot, the driver would've completely independent knowledge of where they are utterly independent of train control and any onboard nav system. And this train pilotage system pilot system would also have an indication of all the track gangs, track work, and any works ahead of them that they'd be getting real time.

Gaye Francis (08:50):

Well, you could put a lot of information in it. Because it'd give you pure situational awareness, full situational awareness. And so if the track gang or another train was there, everything's identifiable now that all of that feeds into the system, that gives you a holistic picture of what's around.

Richard Robinson (09:08):

Well, what's one of the things, remember with the aviation sector, they've stopped using radar and they've gone to ADSP. And ADSP basically means that each aircraft is squittering where it is 10 times a second or 10 times a minute or whatever it is, and basically just reporting its GPS position and then the information's being fed back to all the other aircraft so they where are they are. Now there is no reason why a train couldn't have the same technology. The point we're making is that all these new technologies are emerging in other domains. They all have potential application to the train.

Gaye Francis (09:36):

Not necessarily just emerging, Richard, I think some of these technologies have been well and truly established.

Richard Robinson (09:41):

Well, yes, they've been well and truly established. They're robust and proven.

Gaye Francis (09:45):

Yes. And whether the application can be varied and expanded to a whole lot of other industries.

Richard Robinson (09:54):

Well, you might remember I asked at that conference just saying, I just asked one of the marine pilot guys, I think, I can't remember if he was Australian or Norwegian. He said, oh, what would a unit like this cost per train driver and if you had to sort of map where all the rail lines were so you could sort of cross connect where the position was and so forth, he just sort of said, well, it's probably to $3000 to $5,000 per unit and it's battery operating goes for 15 hours for each train driver. So that pretty much covers any rail trip in Australia. And he said for $50 million we'd fall over ourselves to do it for you. The entirety of Australia.

Gaye Francis (10:28):

There might've been a bit of a marketing PR in there as well.

Richard Robinson (10:32):

No, when I pushed him on the matter, we probably do it for $25M. <laughs>

Gaye Francis (10:37):

So what we're sort of saying is just because you designed to the standard doesn't mean that you satisfy the obligations. And we've said this a number of times in different podcasts, the obligations of WHS/OHS legislation, but it also stifles innovation. And I think that's where some of the chief engineers are getting really cranky at their engineers because they're saying, no, no, no. Look at what the problems are and what they currently are. What are the options that are available to address that issue? And then what is reasonable in the circumstances.

Richard Robinson (11:09):

And culturally, this is one of the things that absolutely drives us crackers with Engineers Australia because basically they're encouraging every engineer to give their intellectual property to Standards Australia for free with no recognition. They actually breach the code of ethics of Engineers Australia because in the North American standards, they make a point of listing the person, their organisation. Whereas in Standards Australia they just list an organisation. You don't know where the idea's come from. There's no way of testing them. And rather than Engineers Australia doing it, which is, if you want innovation where it ought to be, once you start pushing through a standards committee, you're toast.

Gaye Francis (11:45):

Yeah. Just stops that innovation altogether, doesn't it? So I guess there's a couple of, be careful as we end this podcast. Be careful that you're actually looking at what all the credible critical issues are and you're designing to make sure all reasonable practical precautions are in that. And when you take a standard, have a look to make sure that it still actually applies and is applicable to what you're doing. Because we've seen that as well, a standard being applied and the circumstance to which the standard is being applied isn't even considered by the standard.

Richard Robinson (12:18):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (12:18):

So you need to be really careful of that as well. So we hope you've found this podcast interesting. I'm sure this is one that we will explore in more detail and a number of other times. So thanks again for the chat, Richard.

Richard Robinson (12:32):

Thanks Gaye.

Safety Culture & Women's PPE

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 2, Episode 8

In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss the importance of safety culture for women's personal protective equipment (PPE) in the workplace. 

Gaye shares her experience of encountering ill-fitting and uncomfortable PPE during her consulting career, which led her to advocate for better-fitting PPE for women. She explains the journey of founding Apto PPE, a women's and maternity fit-for-purpose safety workwear business, with the support of R2A. They discuss the challenges of getting proper fitting PPE for women in the market and the slow uptake of these options. 

They also highlight the importance of organisations prioritising the safety of women onsite; that from a WHS/OHS legislation perspective the objective is to achieve the highest level of protection, organisations need to ask: “Is this reasonably practicable?” The answer should be “Why not?”; not “Why would we?” 

You can purchase Apto PPE via our online store, or contact Gaye to discuss your specific needs.

Full episode transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss safety culture in terms of women's PPE and Gaye's role in founding Apto PPE, a women's and maternity fit-for-purpose safety workwear business.

(00:22):

We hope you enjoy their chat. As always, if you do, please give us a rating. Also, please subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any questions or topic ideas, please get in touch via admin@r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:39):

Hi Richard and welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:43):

Hi Gaye. We're back again.

Gaye Francis (00:45):

We are back again. Today we're going to talk about something that's probably dear to my heart and you've been on the journey with me and that's about women's PPE onsite and the safety of women onsite. And I guess I've been an advocate for this for 15 years or so, maybe a bit more. And the journey that we've been on, and the setting up of Apto PPE, which R2A have supported for such a long time and continue to support, I'm happy to say.

(01:17):

I guess it all started as a Women in Engineering project many, many years ago when I was National Deputy Chair. And there was a project of some girls coming and saying that there was no proper fitting PPE for women. All the PPE for women was ill-fitting. And I can say that I have experienced that myself in my consulting career.

Richard Robinson (01:43):

I can confirm that I have witnessed this. I have actually sent photos of you to your new husband in your ill-fitting PPE they parked you in when we were in New Zealand one time inspecting things.

Gaye Francis (01:52):

It wasn't really attractive and it certainly wasn't comfortable to wear and it wasn't safe. One of my clear recollections is for being in a mine in New South Wales and I have quite a small foot, I'm a size seven ladies and I needed to have gumboots to go underground to have a look and my actual steel cap boots that were my own supply actually fitted inside the gumboots, the smallest gumboot that they had. And I remember walking around the mine and my foot coming out of that gumboot and my gumboot being left there. And I said to Richard, I said: If anything happens, Richard, I can't get out of here if my gumboots don't stay on. And I recall you saying to me: It's all right. I'll pick you up under my arm and run with you. So I sort of felt good that I wouldn't be left behind.

(02:44):

But it sort of made me think about why didn't women have proper fitting and fit for purpose PPE on site. So as I said, we are involved in Women in Engineering and one of the girls came and said: Ehy don't we have any of the proper fitting PPE for women onsite. Shoes was one thing, but also shirts and pants. And so we started to do a little bit of research. And the research that we came up with was there were a few organisations that had inverted commas "women's PPE", but all that they seemed to do was change the buttons from one side to the other. They weren't any different design, they weren't a different shape.

Richard Robinson (03:26):

For the males you probably don't realise that women's buttons actually do up on the other side.

Gaye Francis (03:30):

So when we talk to the larger organisations or the larger manufacturers of PPE, they said: Oh yes, we have a unisex range. So I sort of thought, well, women come in all different shapes and sizes and we have different body parts that are in different places and things like that that men's shirts don't necessarily fit the female form. So we did this pilot study through Women in Engineering. We had some designers from Challenger University in WA who came and did some prototypes for us. And that sort of went on and then we launched it at the international conference in Adelaide and it was really, really well received. And so Women in Engineering then did a trial with John Holland at the time and we got some really good feedback. But as a not-for-profit organisation, where does it go after that?

(04:22):

So we sort of started Apto PPE to see if we could get some proper fitting female PPE that was designed and tested by women that actually fitted the women's shape but also looked a bit different to what was on the market. No pockets on the breast line, no pockets on your thighs where you are a bit bigger. We need things in different shapes and sizes. So that's sort of how Apto started. And I remember at the time three of us had the idea of to start Apto and we called Richard down the back of the office and said: Richard, we've got an idea for you. And that's where we pitched it. I'm not sure he had any chance of...

Richard Robinson (05:05):

I was not in a position to say no, as I recall.

Gaye Francis (05:09):

You also thought it was a good idea at the time.

Richard Robinson (05:12):

Yea, well!

Gaye Francis (05:13):

And it sort of fitted with R2A's due diligence aspect as well in that it was safety onsite and how do we make sure that women are safe onsite so far as is reasonably practicable.

Richard Robinson (05:24):

I could actually identify vaguely with it because kind of lanky and having shirts that are a bit too short for you, you're just not comfortable. And the same thing happens when you're buying PPE for males. I mean I have to have an oversized body in order to get the right length arms and things like that. So you just notice these things and I presume women who sometimes fret about these things from my observation, more than a lot of males do, it would've obviously have much greater concern.

Gaye Francis (05:50):

So yeah, we've always pushed Apto from the safety aspect and making sure that women were safe onsite. And I think as you said, if you have Ill-fitting PPE that's too big in some areas it can get caught on machinery. It just gets in the way of you being able to do your job.

(06:10):

But one of the interesting things, as I said, we started Apto almost 15 years ago and there was not much on the market at that time.

Richard Robinson (06:21):

And the point I do remember, you were quite clear at the time, you weren't expecting to make money, but what you were hoping to do is change the world.

Gaye Francis (06:28):

Change the world. We've all got those aspirations whether we get there or not. And I think Apto has done that. There is certainly a lot more PPE options on the market now for females than there ever were. And it's really interesting to see, but the takeup is still really slow.

Richard Robinson (06:48):

Oh, and you've tried to get into a couple of organisations where, shall we say, the PPE operation is actually operated by a male who really doesn't get the point that women would like some different stuff around.

Gaye Francis (06:58):

I agree. And the procurement processes that go with it. And because they're still a minority, you are looking for specific PPE for tens of women rather than hundreds of women. So that bulk...

Richard Robinson (07:12):

Although I've got to say the pregnancy gear has actually been quite well accepted.

Gaye Francis (07:18):

That's correct. And one of the interesting things that a couple of organisations have done is actually put in a maternity bank in their organisation. So rather than having a personal issue PPE, they've had a bank of maternity pants and shirts from our range that the HR area actually keep. And so when you're pregnant and you change sizes during your pregnancy, you can go and get the size that fits you now and then in a couple of months time you go and get the next size if you need it. So that's a really interesting initiative I think from a number of Queensland organisations, mining organisations up in Gladstone that have done that.

(07:55):

So I think from Apto's viewpoint, we are sticking around to challenge the big guys that it's still not good enough. And even these 15 years later, I went to a NAWIC (National Association of Women In Construction) International Women's Day event in March this year, and they were talking about that we are still challenged on the basics in the construction industry; female facilities, toilet facilities, and change rooms on site. And PPE was still there (as an issue). And that was really mind blowing to me because I thought people had embraced that and organisations were just getting on with it. But I think it still shows that there's some women's workwear out there that is still unisex workwear that's sold as women's wear that not necessarily designed to fit a woman's shape and size.

(08:51):

You also went to an AMPI conference, Australian Marine Pilots conference, in October, I think it was, in Perth, and you listened to one of the... They were called the WISTA Group and they're the Women's International Shipping and Trading Association. And it was just a women's session on...

Richard Robinson (09:08):

Well, these are women/female marine pilots and marine pilotage is a particularly blokey sort of a place, I've got to say. Although the new president of AMPI's female. But the one that was particularly impressive was the female marine pilot from Papua New Guinea because that's a very paternal society. And to be a female marine pilot of Papua New Guinea, it was truly impressive. I wasn't so surprised by the Finnish and some of the Norwegians and the Nordic countries having female marine pilots. But there are some cultures where to be a female marine pilot is absolutely quite remarkable. It means you've been a ship's master generally on international shipping. So it's really quite impressive.

Gaye Francis (09:47):

But one of the issues that they were still bringing up was Ill-fitting PPE when we are in the 1920s - gosh, that's really a faux pas isn't it? The 2020s that would be! And we're still having these conversations when there's so much stuff that should be done. So from R2A's viewpoint and Apto's viewpoint, we're asking the question: Why shouldn't females have proper fitting, safe workwear onsite? Why wouldn't they?

Richard Robinson (10:19):

Well, from our point of view, it's been the WHS question. If the objective is to achieve the highest level of protection, is this reasonably practicable? The question is: Why not? But when you actually go to industry and talk to people, the reason is: Why would we? Which is the wrong way around and always has been.

Gaye Francis (10:39):

So that's Apto's challenge to organisations out there is make your women safe on site. There is options out there and there's quite a few options out there. They are smaller organisations, they're not the big guys, but there's some really good fitting female PPE out there. So make you girls safe on site.

Richard Robinson (10:59):

I think it goes a bit further than that. If the women in the office aren't happy, life gets more difficult. I recommend keeping the women in the office and onsite cheerful, life goes better.

Gaye Francis (11:10):

Well that shouldn't be the primary reason, but yes, that's right Richard.

Richard Robinson (11:14):

It does.

Gaye Francis (11:15):

Alright, so thank you for joining us today and listening to my rant. I hope you found it interesting and if Apto can help in any way, I'm more than happy to talk Apto further with anybody that's interested. So have a great day.

Richard Robinson (11:30):

Thanks Gaye.

White Island Volcano Eruption - NZ trial on alleged breach of Workplace Health & Safety laws

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Episode 8, Season 1

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Gaye Francis and Richard Robinson discuss the current New Zealand trial on the White Island Volcanic Eruption.

The White Island volcano erupted on 9 December, 2019 resulting in 22 deaths. Charges were brought against various parties involved alleging breaches in New Zealand's workplace health and safety laws.

This is one of the first big test cases of the WHS and Workplace Health and Safety laws in Australia and New Zealand. And the outcomes will be fascinating will set a precedence.

Transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:02):

Hi, welcome to this edition of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis talk about the current trial in New Zealand regarding the White Island volcanic eruption and the charges brought against various parties under the potential breach of the New Zealand workplace health and safety law.

(00:29):

We hope you enjoyed the episode. If you do, please give us a rating to help spread the word. You can also check out other episodes in this first season. We also have all the details for Richard and Gaye and their business services in the description. If you have any feedback, please let us know.

Gaye Francis (00:49):

Welcome to another podcast recording session. We're a bit different today. We're doing this remotely. (Richard's) at home and I'm at home. But, we thought we'd record a podcast today on the White Island Volcanic Eruption and the trial that's commenced in New Zealand just recently in the last month or so.

(01:06):

A little bit of background. The White Island volcano erupted on the 9th of December, 2019, and 22 people were killed on the island during the eruption. WorkSafe has bought some charges against some parties involved, who own the island and operate. So I think there were 13 parties charged originally.

Richard Robinson (01:30):

Yes.

Gaye Francis (01:30):

And they've alleged to have breached New Zealand's workplace health and safety laws. In the proceedings today, it looks like that six have pleaded guilty so far. One party, the charges have been dropped. And then there's been six proceeded to trial.

(01:50):

So I think, Richard, you were just gonna give us a bit of an introduction on who those parties were and what the charges were, and then we'll go through some of the insight into what what we've been reading in the press reports.

Richard Robinson (02:04):

Yeah. What, what I found particularly interesting, and again, we're just reading the press on this one here, is that the island, it's actually privately owned. It was bought by some grandfather, stockbroker apparently some time ago, and he passed it on to his son and then the son passed on to his three grandsons. So the island's actually owned by these three grandkids. And they've tried at different times to make money out of the thing. And in the end, the only thing that came up with was having tours to the island. So that's what they've been busily selling.

(02:30):

Now, this is a hydrothermal eruption apparently, which I don't know too much about. I know very little about volcanism and those sorts of things, but basically these things apparently can be primed and ready to go. I mean, if you just think of... obviously it's a volcanic island and it's in New Zealand, and they're on the fault line. And hydrothermal basically means there's a pile of water down there, which is suddenly flash into vapor unexpectedly. And apparently when you listen to the volcanologists, it's a very difficult thing to predict. Although it was actually the case that the volcano was showing some energy and energetics, I think it was at level two activity. And I think level three means it's really underway. So the suggestion was that this volcanism was known, from some form of foreseeability viewpoint, which is what the basis of this action is. And in view of this knowledge or lack of knowledge, in the case of the owners and tour operators, they didn't bother to try and find out, apparently they didn't really understand that this thing was perhaps more closely ready to go than it could have been.

Gaye Francis (03:30):

I think that one, just before the proceedings started, the WorkSafe New Zealand chief executive said in one of his interviews: "This was an unexpected event, but that does not mean it was unforeseeable. And there is a duty on operators to protect those in their care". So they're saying exactly that. And I think one of the interesting things at the start of the trial was they started talking about risk assessment, had a whole lot of risk assessment experts in, and they were arguing about the likelihood of it, which was really quite interesting at the start and how likely an eruption was going to be. And I think, going back to that WorkSafe quote, although it was unexpected, it wasn't unforeseeable and it's now happened. So how do we move on from there?

Richard Robinson (04:16):

Well, it's interesting 'cause I remember, I was telling you, I was just looking at the part of the Wrongs Act in Victoria, it deals with negligence and all that sort of thing. And one of the things that it specifically makes the point is that you can have an obvious risk, but it can be rare. You know, the fact that something's rare doesn't mean that it's not obvious. And that you should know and do things about it. And, I think, what particularly interested you was, I mean, I was looking up, one of the parties that got the charges dismissed against them was their national emergency management agent. In fact, they could awarded $40,000 for their expenses for doing all the work. And that point you made, because what the judge said when they were dismissing it says that the NEMA, this nationally emergency management authority of New Zealand never deviated from its position before and after it was charged. That is (i.e.) they had a position, they'd thought it through, they did what they said they were gonna do, and they followed it through. And that was the point that you just made when we were talking about what we're gonna do here.

Gaye Francis (05:11):

And I think that that's the interesting thing, isn't it? And this is what we tell our clients when we do due diligence review for them. You can't always be right, but you can always be diligent. And by having a plan in place and having it thought through, and then acting on that plan, it shows a process, a governance process, which I think the WHS legislation was always aimed at. It was a governance process for organisations to demonstrate that they thought these things through.

Richard Robinson (05:38):

Well, remember that last expert witness case we were doing for that bushfire in South Australia for the South Australia Supreme Court. The lawyer was just asking us for the process. He wasn't asking whether the decision that they'd finally come to was the right decision. They were testing to see whether the steps they'd gone through were reasonable; that they had tried and they'd thought it through and they talked to the right people and maybe everybody got it collectively wrong, but that still didn't mean they weren't diligent.

Gaye Francis (06:02):

And I think that's one of the things that's coming out of the White Island volcano (case); they're saying, well, New Zealand has a volcano monitoring service, the GNS Science, but they weren't specifically engaged by the tour operators or the owners of the island to do a specific risk assessment -- whether that's the right term or not -- on the island, and the risk of actually running tours through the island. So they're sort of saying: Well, there was this expertise in the country, had they gained the information they needed to make a diligent decision about doing the activities that they wanted to do on the island.

Richard Robinson (06:42):

Yeah. It's interesting that whole risk business pops up again, remember the podcast on (language of) risk, we were talking about the fact that the courts used the term a different way -- after the event the fact is obviously certain. It's actually interesting because it was Kiwi (New Zealand) judges we were quoting, 'cause Frank Stocks put us onto those Kiwi judges and Kiwi cases where the Kiwi courts were making the point that, in court risk means the likelihood of the event that happened; in this case, this rare event.

Gaye Francis (07:10):

Mm. The volcano. One of the other interesting things was the first week sort of focused on that risk assessment process and the information that was sought or provided to the various parties about the volcano. And then the second part of the trial is focusing on what else could have been done. Which is really the focus of the WHS legislation or the Workplace Health and Safety legislation in New Zealand.

Richard Robinson (07:39):

But it's the point it's not who owns the hazard, it's who has control.

Gaye Francis (07:44):

And they were talking about apparently there was a shipping container put in place which could have been as a shelter in the event of a volcano, but the volcano apparently erupted very, very quickly and the likelihood of people being able to get to the shelter in situ was pretty unlikely. So now they're looking at what other controls can be put in place to be able to run these sort of activities there.

Richard Robinson (08:14):

Well one of the things that you were mentioning was the fact that the people weren't wearing special clothing. Obviously PPE is the lowest thing you'd ever think about, but one of the problems that the survivors have got is that their clothes melted into them because they were rather basically plastic.

Gaye Francis (08:29):

Wearing active wear rather than cotton clothing.

Richard Robinson (08:34):

I mean, even if you put people in cotton overalls and things like that and made sure they had big safety boots and things like that, you'd be making a clear statement to people that this thing's serious. You wanna think about it, you're just not a tourist snooping at something hoping it doesn't go off.

Gaye Francis (08:49):

Mm-hmm. Which is sort of the way that chemical plants and things like that can spill out toxic clouds and toxic materials. They sort of deal with that, don't they, when you go out onsite, you have to have the full long sleeves, long pants, cotton, so, as you said, it won't melt into you.

(09:09):

But as you said, that's way down the hierarchy of controls. But I don't know that the... they did talk about some engineering controls and I don't know whether they're reasonable or not, but they're talking about ballistic shelters and refuge shelters. And I know in bushfire terms, people are starting to look at that -- being able to shelter in the place if they get stuck, they can do that. Whether a shelter can be designed for a volcano, I'm not sure?

Richard Robinson (09:39):

Well, it's interesting that the army had been in in shiny suits and breathing apparatus to try and retrieve people. And they spent six days apparently in fairly trying circumstances doing the best they could. But, again, if you were put into a big shiny suit with some breathing apparatus, you'd probably think it was a pretty serious event, wouldn't you? Which you otherwise might not consider that to be the case.

Gaye Francis (10:02):

And I think that's part of it, isn't it? It's that information; was the right information shared with the owners and the tour operators and then with the actual tourists. I know when you do those dangerous activities, they sort of give you a waiver to say, I understand those things. But they have to be in layman's terms that the people actually understand, don't they?

Richard Robinson (10:25):

Well I don't think jumping out of an aircraft that anybody's in any doubt of it goes wrong, it's gonna kill you. I dunno if the clarity...

Gaye Francis (10:31):

I don't if you think about it that way when you're 20 though.

Richard Robinson (10:35):

Well, that's part of the point. I don't know if people have thought about it like that. And so it, it's gonna be an interesting thing to see where the Kiwis actually land. I've gotta say that.

Gaye Francis (10:43):

I'm not sure whether the ones that have pleaded guilty, whether they'll just involve fines or whether it'll be jail time. But as you said, this is really the first big test case, isn't it, of the WHS and Workplace Health and Safety laws in Australia and New Zealand. And the outcomes will be fascinating. I think. Will set a precedence going forward.

Richard Robinson (11:10):

Almost certainly.

Gaye Francis (11:12):

So we hope you found our podcast interesting today. A little bit different with Richard and me online together, and we hope you can join us next time. Have a great afternoon.

Richard Robinson (11:22):

Thanks Gaye. Bye everyone.

Gaye Francis (11:24):

Bye.