How Information Sharing Has Changed: Part 2 The Public Sphere

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 7, Episode 9

In the second of two episodes of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance on How Information Sharing has Changed, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss how the Public Sphere has evolved and what it ultimately means for SFAIRP.

Richard starts the chat outlining the work of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, tracing the journey of public discourse from coffee houses through to commercially-driven newspapers and media moguls, to today's podcast landscape. 

They discuss why they believe high-quality, discussion-based podcasts seem to be rising above the noise, how real-time expert conversation is replacing the slower editorial cycle of print media, and why helping people distinguish credible information has never been more important.

Richard and Gaye conclude the episode bringing the discussion back to SFAIRP (So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable) and how truly informed decisionmaking, whether in workplace health and safety or in a democracy, depends on robust, thoughtful public discussion rather than siloed, commercially driven narratives.

They also highlight how long it took R2A to move from target level of risk and safety to SFAIRP, and how they hope their podcast helps others better understand it.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. This is the second of two episodes where due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss how information sharing has changed with part 2's discussion on the public sphere.

(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. 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):

Hi Richard. Welcome to our podcast session today.

Richard Robinson (00:42):

Hi Gaye. This is part two, I believe.

Gaye Francis (00:43):

It is part two of our internet risk podcast that we're talking about. So today we're going to follow on from what we did last time and about SFAIRP internet managing internet risk and talk today about the public sphere and how information sharing has changed over time. You're going to give us a brief history.

Richard Robinson (01:07):

Well, not so much I'm going to give a brief history. I was just going to summarise. There was a fellow called Jurgen Habermas who died a couple of weeks ago, he's a German philosopher. And he was particularly concerned about the public sphere, but basically as a young bloke, he was in Nazi Germany and basically got conscripted at 16 to go and man an aircraft gun in 1945. But it wasn't until after that he actually had to look at the Holocaust sites and just realise what the total horror was. And he became a very influential, I guess, left wing, basically trying to make sure the German society didn't go to that place again. So he sort of well regarded. Now the concept he had was the public sphere and what he was pointing out, and maybe I just might just read a couple of bits here.

(01:51):

He was talking about the public sphere and the role of public sphere as in shaping Democratic administration society. In ideal form, the public sphere is made up of private people gathered together as a public and articulating needs of society with the state. And basically he's saying it's very much a sort of bourgeois middle class driven thing. And he said it basically sort of arrived in a practical sense when the coffee shop's in the 18th century where we really got together and basically gab-fest about the <issues> of the age, but basically because they were the middle class and they had the voting power, they were the people who basically decided and then sort of set the theme and what politicians would or couldn't do and basically therefore established what should be the case. Now the reason why this is kind of interesting because he then went on to say, well, look, what happened, Marastof started as a coffee shop arrangement and after a while all the broad sheets and things that people were printing off to enhance discussion basically turned into newspapers and that turned into a sort of capitalist driven market forces sort of thing where in the end the editor could actually decide who got elected and who didn't, depending on what editorials were written and things like that. But it emphasised that the whole process, the public fear emphasised that the newspaper should preferably be independent and give different points of view so that the larger society could decide what it is they wanted to do and how they wanted to achieve it.

(03:06):

Now obviously what happened is the internet, COVID turned up and kind of busted this because nobody's reading newspapers anymore. And all the podcasts have sort of waxed powerfully. But we've sort of noticed partly because the fact that our podcasts has become more influential, which to say is a complete source of astonishment to both of us is an understatement.

Gaye Francis (03:28):

That's kind - influential. More, popular?

Richard Robinson (03:31):

More popular. But what I've observed was you see what's actually been happening. And you see, a whole lot of podcasters turned up, some who had more intellectual horsepower than others. But some of those who have less intellectual horsepower, actually they're fading because they're losing their clicks. And I don't know if it's because the algorithm changed or because really the thing is just sorting itself out. But the ones who are sort of sustaining, at least the ones I obviously listen to, are actually fairly high horsepower from what I can tell. Now, I didn't actually realise til I mentioned (last episode) this Patrick Boyle character and he turned out to be a professor and a former hedge fund manager, a bunch of different things. And he was the one I was telling you about who sort of was commenting that he speaks perfect English because he's Irish and everybody else has a strange accent.

Gaye Francis (04:20):

Only an Irishman could say that.

Richard Robinson (04:23):

An Irishman could say that. But the points he were making were actually quite profound, I thought. And then he was going on about the impact of the, because he was a hedge fund and he was looking at the impact of the war. I mean, one of the other points he made in passing was the oil shortage is going to affect the Scottish pretty severely, because as a population they've evolved to live on fried food, deep fried food, which I thought was a bit tough.

Gaye Francis (04:48):

Very tough, very tough.

Richard Robinson (04:50):

But he's obviously a very sharp cookie. Now, what I've observed is that the internet ones that seem to be surviving are the people and who are actually ... It's not so much individual presenters. You listen to an individual presenter and I find you get sick of it pretty fast. What you want are the people who are actually talking together that you sort of get familiar to.

Gaye Francis (05:09):

Discussion.

Richard Robinson (05:10):

Discussion. And I actually suspect that's what, because I don't know what you're going to say next any more than you know what I'm going to say next.

Gaye Francis (05:17):

That is very true, Richard.

Richard Robinson (05:19):

But then you listen to people on international politics from Australia vernacular. You see Hugh White talking with Sam Roggeveen from the Lowy Institute. And when those two are talking about politics and the way American politics affect Australia, would you really think that America would come to Australia's defense and in the changing world, what does Australia have to do? And yes, we've gone inside free trade agreements last week with the European Union as well as Canada, because (their PM) Carney was out here, both the European president and the Carney addressed the Australian Parliament in the last month or so. The whole thing, the world is really changing fast. And these authoritative podcasters that are actually having discussions are the ones that seem to be winning the day.

Gaye Francis (06:04):

So do you think that comes back to what we're talking about, the public sphere and how information is shared? So it's that discussion?

Richard Robinson (06:12):

Yeah. And it's moving away from ... Because remember, starting the coffee houses, according to Jurgen, and it's moved to the newspapers commercially driven, run by media moguls, Murdoch and the other families and things like that.

Gaye Francis (06:25):

They're only printing what they think people want to hear.

Richard Robinson (06:27):

Yeah. But more than that, they try to then take over the blog sphere and the YouTube sphere, the podcast sphere. But I think people are actually starting to move away from that. And certainly people like me, I don't listen to some particular ... I'm listening to ... Let's find somebody who knows what they're talking about and listen to them in discussion. And I find that to be a lot more useful. Now, I may be an optimist here, but if you actually think that's the way the world is going, where that discussion used to be, I mean, you read an editorial in the newspaper. I can remember hopping on a train and buying the newspaper at the station and reading it on the train. That's what I used to do. I used to come and talk to you about it.

Gaye Francis (07:04):

You did.

Richard Robinson (07:06):

And I can't do that anymore. I'd sometimes swap between papers because I wanted different points of view or I knew different journalists had different attitudes. In effect, what I was doing is reading a discussion, but it's slow because it's in paper and word.

Gaye Francis (07:17):

Yeah, right.

Richard Robinson (07:18):

Now when you listen to these guys...

Gaye Francis (07:19):

It's five or 10 minutes.

Richard Robinson (07:21):

It's five or 10 minutes and they're talking about real time events far faster than these newspaper people can keep up with it. Now, I'm not saying that you wouldn't still want to read something like The Atlantic or The Economist or something like that because they've actually got people writing something who seriously think about it, but they're not the people sitting online writing it. They're the people get the ideas, put an article together and then publish it. So I think the world's changed. That's certainly the case. And you're fretting about your kids because at the moment they're just taking information from anywhere and all information's equal if it comes from the internet, right?

Gaye Francis (07:56):

Correct. They don't know how to <distinguish> between it.

Richard Robinson (07:58):

They have to distinguish between it. But I can remember quite distinctly thinking as a student many, many years ago, that if I had the choice between reading Plato or listening to Pato Live, I would have listened to Plato live, but you couldn't do it.

Gaye Francis (08:11):

You were a different type of person growing up, Richard. I think we can all agree with that. But if we bring it back to the stuff that we do in that SFAIRP realm, and that moral imperative, are we saying that that's trying to create this public vision and a societal vision rather than individuals just doing their own thing and thinking in silos.

Richard Robinson (08:35):

That's correct. I mean, if you talk about the public sphere where you're at gab-festing in a coffee shop and they're mostly blokes doing it anyway, to media moguls running the show, which I got a funny feeling a lot of us didn't think was the particularly best option that we could have to competent...

Gaye Francis (08:52):

People having discussions.

Richard Robinson (08:53):

Real time discussions and it's discussions. I mean, you listen to the different people and you do se them popping up now is that the people who actually make sense are getting interviewed by other people's blogs. I observe that Hugh White gets interviewed by different people and you notice that fellow I was talking about Patrick Boyle, I've noticed him getting interviewed because obviously he knows what he's talking about. So if you're a serious podcaster, the only people you want to talk to are people who actually have competent views and you can have a competent discussion and you can actually have a disagreement, but it's a disagreement that's actually intellectually thought through. So if you're talking about having a good resolution to complicated issues, you've got the best chance I think you can in real time faster with the new internet system and you can have an argument.

(09:46):

I mean, one of the problems with, we had the problem with people, the American president just keeps typing away things every night and you've got no idea what's going on and all sorts of things, but then you hear a competent discussion about this, that, and what's going on and all of a sudden you can make sense of it, which otherwise you couldn't do. Now, whether that's helpful or not, I don't know. But the optimist in me is saying, yeah, maybe it's not as bad as everybody thinks. And maybe it's not as bad for your kids as everybody thinks because if they become clear which ones are the ones worth listening to that do encourage the public sphere (and) competent information.

Gaye Francis (10:22):

To make informed decisions.

Richard Robinson (10:25):

To make competent, informed decisions, which is what you want. Democracy fails if you don't have the competence middle class, as it were, having this informed decision making.

Gaye Francis (10:39):

And I think we've talked to podcasts about informed decision making and that's the basis of SFAIRP, isn't it?

Richard Robinson (10:45):

In effect, yes. And that you thought through all the options in the circumstances. I mean, that was when we invited the professor of law and public policy from Cambridge out, David Howarth, and he was saying the lawyers and the engineers are very much aligned. You've got a problem or you want to do something, what are the options and in the circumstances which is the best way forward? Isn't that what an election is?

Gaye Francis (11:05):

Supposed to be, yes.

Richard Robinson (11:06):

Supposed to be.

Gaye Francis (11:08):

So Richard, in this podcast, there was a lot of information that my little brain's been ticking over and my summary of it is that you think R2A have really moved into that thought leadership process now again of the due diligence space and the WHS legislation in a SFAIRP sense and that SFAIRP is really encouraging that moral imperative to look at the community as a whole and do the best for the community in a public sense rather than looking at it from a commercial and individual silo sense.

Richard Robinson (11:44):

That's right. SFAIRP has moved into the public sphere and it's taking people like us to actually discuss it and so that everyone understands it.

Gaye Francis (11:50):

Understands what it is. Because it's complex.

Richard Robinson (11:54):

Well, any moral imperative tends to create difficulties for society.

Gaye Francis (12:00):

Yeah. And so you need to have these robust discussions to be able to go forward and get those best outcomes that we're hoping to get.

Richard Robinson (12:07):

Well, you know how long it took us to move from that sort of target level of risk and safety to the SFAIRP side of things. And it took us the best part of 20 years. Now that transition, I mean, we're in the business. I mean, we live and breathe this stuff. So if it was hard for us, just imagine how hard it is for ordinary people just doing going with the ordinary lives, it is to get up to speed in these things. It's very difficult.

Gaye Francis (12:30):

So I think keeping those two things in mind, look at all the things that you can do and what's reasonable in the circumstances, but with that holistic community and public context, you hopefully get the best outcomes. Thanks for joining us today and we'll see you next time.

Richard Robinson (12:48):

Thanks, Gaye.

Two Types of Regulators

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 6, Episode 9

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the two types of Regulators.

They outline two fundamentally different regulatory philosophies: regulators who view prosecutions as a measure of success versus those who see them as a measure of failure.

The discussion examines how the "so far as is reasonably practicable" (SFAIRP) framework has shifted the burden of proof, making it harder for some regulators to secure convictions and created new challenges for organisations trying to demonstrate compliance. 

Richard and Gaye analyse recent high-profile cases, including the Auckland Port Authority CEO conviction and the Hazelwood fire prosecution, highlighting how transparency of process, not just outcomes, has become central to regulatory scrutiny.

They also discuss the complications arising from overlapping legislation across Australian jurisdictions, the tension between organisations' stated commitment to safety and their legal defence strategies, and how New Zealand appears to be leading the way in prosecuting senior executives. 

Engineering Due Diligence: The confusion between Risk, Assurance & Diligence

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 5, Episode 9

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis revisit the fundamentals of engineering due diligence in response to listener feedback about the confusion between risk, assurance and diligence.

The discussion covers how R2A became specialised in due diligence engineering through their expert witness work, where they learned that due diligence serves as a defense against negligence with two key components: having reasonable control in place and taking all reasonable steps to protect against foreseeable harm.

Richard explains their decision to move away from quantified risk assessments using target risk levels, as this cannot adequately demonstrate due diligence. Instead, R2A advocates for a top-down approach that identifies critical issues, evaluates available controls, and determines what's reasonable in the circumstances.

They clarify that while due diligence obligations are explicitly stated for corporate officers in workplace safety legislation, all professional engineers have an implied duty to demonstrate due diligence as part of their professional responsibilities, and emphasise that simply following regulator approval doesn't guarantee protection from negligence claims. Engineers must take a holistic approach rather than relying solely on Standards or regulatory compliance.

The books they mention are:

• For Directors: Criminal Manslaughter, How Not To Do It

• For Engineers: Risk Management & Negligence; Due diligence Essentials for Engineers

 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 revisit the topic of due diligence. And this is thanks to an email from Chris who wrote that they've been listening to the podcast to better understand risk due diligence, Rail Safety National Law, and duties of engineers, and that it's hard to rationalise the relationship and hierarchy of Rail Safety National Law versus (e.g.) Victoria's OHS Act, what is and isn't required to be diligent, and the relationship of risk assurance and diligence.

(00:40):

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

Gaye Francis (00:58):

Hi Richard, welcome to a podcast session.

Richard Robinson (01:01):

Good to be here again, Gaye.

Gaye Francis (01:04):

Today we're going to revisit due diligence and part of it's based that we've recently had an enquiry about an observation that there's some confusion and differing views out and about around the risk space, around risk and assurance and diligence and what it actually means. And I thought what we'd do today, we've covered due diligence on a number of our podcasts, but if we go back today and have a look how we actually started in the engineering due diligence space and why we did it and how we apply due diligence in the engineering work that we do, that might be a useful conversation. So I'll get you to give an intro into how we became due diligence engineers.

Richard Robinson (01:50):

I can do that. I must firstly observe. It was surprised to me to see that you'd never actually listened to one of our podcasts. I recommend you do that. Gaye.

Gaye Francis (01:58):

Oh, well, we're only in Season 5 Richard. I'll get around to it.

Richard Robinson (02:01):

Excellent. Now, anyway, the reason why we became due diligence engineers, and as far as I know you were around during the entire process, was that we were doing this as response to expert witness matters before the courts. Now we're engineers, not lawyers. So what happened was that every time you do an expert witness case, the lawyers tell you to read various things, and they directed our attention to various relevant cases, particularly Wyong Shire Council vs Shirt, where Chief Justice Harry Gibbs talking about the balance of the significance of the risk versus the effort required to reduce it. But what became patently clear to us about all of this was that due diligence has always been a defense against negligence. And there were two parts against the defense against negligence. The first part was the no power defense, that you could only be responsible for matters over which you had control. And the second part was that in the circumstances as a reasonable human being, you would do all reasonable things to protect against foreseeable bad things that might happen to other people around you or the people, your clients and so forth. And so due diligence was articulated quite clearly to us as a defense against negligence.

(03:08):

Now, the world moved on, and in 2004, Maxwell QC reviewed the OHS Act in Victoria, and he put in place that you had to eliminate hazards so far as reasonably practical and if you couldn't eliminate, you had to reduce them so far as reasonably practicable. But the Victorian Act doesn't talk about due diligence anywhere. But nevertheless, we were cognisant of what the Act was talking about. And we were doing at the time, quantified risk assessments where you target levels of risk and safety around major hazard facilities. And I've got to say it's a prosperous area of activity to be in.

Gaye Francis (03:41):

It is.

Richard Robinson (03:42):

But when you looked at that and you looked at what due diligence as a defense against negligence was which engineers had to apply. I mean, you have to pay PI insurance if you're an engineer, and that's mandated under Registration of Engineers, under the Code of Ethics of Engineers Australia, if you don't happen to be a Registered Engineer, you have to do these things. And we basically had to say to the major hazard's regulator of Victoria and all other jurisdictions, and this includes quantified risk assessment in railways, which we had to walk away from, quantified risk assessment in the aviation sector, which we had to walk away from, we said, you cannot demonstrate due diligence by using target levels of risk and safety because there's two parts to it. Apart from the difficulty of actually knowing what the number is for high consequence, low likely things, which is a rabbit hole, which I'm about to test in a court case in the very near future in Brisbane. The other one is, the other side of the equation is what's reasonable in the human effort. Because designating human effort, you can't quantify that unless you're just going to put dollars to it or something and that doesn't work when you talk about life safety.

(04:46):

So we have to say to the major hazards regulator of Victoria and all the other places, we're not going to do it anymore. And why aren't we going to do it anymore? Because we've given up on using target levels of risk, and what your duty is as an engineer and your common law duty is to demonstrate due diligence.

Gaye Francis (05:04):

To show that all reasonable, practicable precautions are in place.

Richard Robinson (05:08):

Now at this point, you could have knocked us over with a feather when Julia Gillard turned up and then started promoting the WHS legislation, taking the SFAIRP approach from Victoria, because remember, she was Victorian, well at least for the purposes of, she went back to South Australia, but for the purpose of this, she was a Victorian. And then she became Workplace Relations Minister, the Chair as Deputy Prime Minister and so forth. And she obviously put her heart and soul in, and she basically tucked due diligence into the WHS legislation, but quite correctly as some people say, and as far as I know, we've always been quite crystal clear on this, that due diligence obligation in a statutory sense applied to the officers of the corporation, the business, the PCPU has to demonstrate that that all reasonable controls are in place. Anybody who works there, you've got to demonstrate all controls are in place.

Gaye Francis (05:58):

Reasonable care

Richard Robinson (05:59):

But the due diligence obligation, and remember due diligence only includes, it doesn't mean the six items in the WHS Act. And I spent a lot of time with Barry Sheriff giving presentations on behalf of Engineers Australia all over Australia, talking about all this because he would talk about what's required. Then I'd say, well, here's what you have to do to demonstrate due diligence with regards to how an organisation would show that all reasonable practicable controls are in place. Now, at this point, seemed being pretty clear to me, the due diligence provisions of the WHS legislation, the onus on directors came from the common law due diligence as a defense against negligence. And I haven't had any lawyer ever disagree with that understanding. That it came from the common law and due diligence as defense against negligence in the common law. Now, that means from a practical viewpoint, all engineers anyway have to demonstrate due diligence...

Gaye Francis (06:52):

Even though it's not explicitly said in the legislation.

Richard Robinson (06:56):

Yeah, because you've got to demonstrate it anyway.

Gaye Francis (06:59):

As a professional engineer.

Richard Robinson (07:00):

As a professional engineer, if that's what you hold yourself out to be. And then as the Chief of the Navy goes to some trouble to say in his documentation, anybody who works in that organisation had better help the officers demonstrate the officer's due diligence. And how do you do that? You demonstrate that all reasonable practicable controls are in place. To say that the engineers don't have that duty, I just find bizarre.

Gaye Francis (07:26):

Yeah, it's sort of inferred in a way, isn't it? And that's how you go about your business as an engineer. How do we show that we're not being negligent or we use due diligence as the demonstration and the process to do that?

Richard Robinson (07:38):

Don't use risk assessments except as the second part. You work out what the core issues are. Because remember, we always came top down. And that's the other thing that R2A always does. We always say, you must come top down working on what the credible critical issues are, and then you work out what the options are. And then you're saying, in the circumstances, the balance, what's reasonable? Because that's the only way you can practically do it.

Gaye Francis (08:01):

Yeah. So we want to do that completeness check like we talked about, what all the controls are that can be put in place and what is reasonable in the circumstances.

Richard Robinson (08:09):

And if you want to be a worthwhile engineer and value to the organisation, particularly if you're a young engineer, starting your career, and this is something we say all the time when we're training young engineers. If you can show that whatever decision you are making has been diligent in a way that will satisfy your managing director and your board, you are worth your weight in gold. And if you are unable to do that, then you are not going to be a very successful engineer, not in this day and age.

Gaye Francis (08:39):

And helps inform decisions to be made.

Richard Robinson (08:41):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (08:42):

So by doing it throughout the organisation and people are right, they come and ask, and there's questions that some of the legislation or some of the regulations and hierarchy control, for example, there's some mismatch between...

Richard Robinson (08:57):

The regulators are muddled.

Gaye Francis (08:58):

And there is some confusion out there and what the requirements are. But as we said, we've always used due diligence as a defense against negligence and the hierarchy controls as the court sees it. So those three: elimination, prevention and mitigation.

Richard Robinson (09:14):

But it actually goes on. Remember some people, and I've seen this written a number of places. Well, if the regulator says It's okay, we're good. No! If it goes badly wrong and the public prosecutor wants to have a go at you, the fact almost all regulators and all that I've ever read, as long as they're acting in good faith, they can't be prosecuted for negligence. But the company can still go down.

Gaye Francis (09:39):

Even though they've followed the rules of the regulator.

Richard Robinson (09:41):

Even though they follow what the regulator said. Unless your legislation for your regulator specifically says that acceptance by the regulator has satisfied all your obligations, and most regulators try to avoid that!

Gaye Francis (09:56):

I was going to say they're more clever than that to say that in full on statement like that.

Richard Robinson (10:01):

Well, that's not quite right because the Victorian major hazards regulator, they have to accept it. But that's not what all jurisdictions say in all the regulatory regimes. You want to be very cautious and have a think about exactly what it is your regulator can and cannot accept.

Gaye Francis (10:19):

Comes back down to that question that we've talked about on a number of occasions and the topic we've talked about on a number of occasions, that you have to think these things through for the circumstances that you find yourself in and the organisation, in the whole of context that you're in. It's not just all of the silos, that you've got to put all of that together and have a holistic approach on this.

Richard Robinson (10:40):

And relying on a Standard as your core defense, you've got to think it through and then you test against the standard to make sure you haven't overlooked anything.

Gaye Francis (10:49):

True. True. Which we covered in our podcast very, very recently.

Richard Robinson (10:54):

Indeed.

Gaye Francis (10:55):

So what we want to talk about today was that there is some confusion out there. There's differing views.

Richard Robinson (11:03):

I suppose it's actually relevant from our point of view, our book "Criminal Manslaughter, How Not To Do It", that's aimed at directors.

Gaye Francis (11:09):

Correct.

Richard Robinson (11:10):

And our latest publication, which was...

Gaye Francis (11:13):

"Risk Management and Negligence, A Guide for Engineers"

Richard Robinson (11:18):

Due Diligence Essentials for Engineers. Because one of the points we make in here, I think it's Section 22, basically points out that designers have a particular duty...

Gaye Francis (11:27):

Under the WHS legislation.

Richard Robinson (11:28):

Correct. And that duty is to eliminate hazards so far as reasonably practicable. And how do you go about demonstrating so far as reasonably practicable that you've achieved those design obligations? Anybody who says you don't have to do due diligence to achieve that, I think is courageous.

Gaye Francis (11:47):

Well, maybe on that note, we would just say, think about what you need to do. And as I said, we've always used due diligence as a defense against negligence in the work that we do. And we would recommend...

Richard Robinson (12:03):

Continuing that way, do not change it. <laughs>

Gaye Francis (12:07):

Thanks for joining us today, Richard, and we will see you next time. Thanks everyone.

Richard Robinson (12:10):

Thanks Gaye.

Bush Fire Risk, Due Diligence & Mitigation Controls

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 4, Episode 9

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss due diligence for bushfires.

Richard has been involved in advising on bushfire risk and controls since Ash Wednesday in 1984, while both Richard and Gaye as R2A were involved with bushfire assessments post Black Saturday in 2009.  

Their discussion highlights:

• Bushfire season is getting longer, and the ability to prepare for it is getting shorter. Volunteer firefighters are also declining.

• Bushfire best practice for local planning for protection has adopted a vulnerability approach – criticality rather than likelihood.

• From a due diligence viewpoint, we know we cannot stop bushfires. But, what are all the controls that we can put in place?  

• Often it's not the threat of the bushfire itself, but the interaction of a community or people with the bushfire – the vulnerability of peri-urban areas.

• Building codes have been updated to improve bushfire resistance, but challenges remain around prescribed burning and access of remote areas during fires.

• Prepare your property, but be ready to evacuate early on high-risk days, as access can quickly become blocked.

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 for bushfires. 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 (00:30):

Hi Richard, welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:32):

Good morning, Gaye.

Gaye Francis (00:34):

Today what we thought we'd talk about is bushfire risk, and we're getting into the hot part of the year (in Australia) and bushfire season is fast approaching. Although speaking to CFA (Country Fire Association) number of years ago, they're saying that the bushfire season seems to be getting longer and longer, and the ability to prepare for such bushfire seasons is getting shorter timewise.

Richard Robinson (01:00):

And also some of the CFA chaps I've talked to, getting volunteers is not the way it used to be either.

Gaye Francis (01:04):

No, that's very true. People aren't living in their community as much are they? And helping out.

Richard Robinson (01:10):

Well, I was particularly interested as I commented, I was busy down at my daughter and son-in-law's place mowing and slashing on the weekend because they live in the bush in Gippsland (Victoria) and making sure that their house is clear and all those good things you're supposed to do.

Gaye Francis (01:22):

So helping out.

Richard Robinson (01:24):

Yep.

Gaye Francis (01:25):

What we thought we'd talk about today was the bushfire risk and then the controls that you can put in place to mitigate against those. And I guess our involvement, well, Richard's involvement in particular started very early on after the Ash Wednesday fires in, what'd you say? 83? 1983.

Richard Robinson (01:43):

Thank you. Thank you for reminding me of that.

Gaye Francis (01:44):

And then we've had some other involvement in bushfire assessments over time, particularly the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. And we were part of the Royal Commission, which we've talked about previously in the electrical distribution podcast that we did.

Richard Robinson (02:01):

Well, the thing that was interesting about that. At the time I was working for GHD with my then business partner who was the principal planner or became a business partner, and I was the senior risk engineer. And we'd written a paper after Ash Wednesday, so it presumably would've been in 84, maybe 85, basically summarising a vulnerability approach to bushfire risk management. And we dug it out and I must say my son looked at the papers. Gee, that's an old format. That was a really old paper, isn't it?

Gaye Francis (02:30):

It's almost typeset rather than computer set, Richard. <laughs>

Richard Robinson (02:35):

Well, the picture's sketched by hand, isn't it?

Gaye Francis (02:38):

It is.

Richard Robinson (02:41):

Anyway, but what I found completely fascinating is that we then downloaded some stuff from bushfire, best practice from CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) and local planning for bushfire protection from Environment Land, Water and Planning, and they also have adopted the vulnerability approach, which is the very military intelligence approach, which basically is a criticality driven approach. It doesn't ask the question how likely something is because bushfires are basically generational, but you know that they will happen. It's a bit like the Powerline and Bushfire Safety Taskforce work and the REFCLS (Rapid Earth Fault Current Limiters) or ground fault neutralisers, they've apparently worked very well from what your feedback was. And has stopped, the likelihood of bushfire starts from electrical faults on the network. But that doesn't stop bushfires.

Gaye Francis (03:23):

No, because we know that bushfires have started for a whole lot of reasons, often human related.

Richard Robinson (03:29):

Well, I thought the one always amused me was people driving somewhere to go to Eildon or go down to the Gippsland Lakes or something like that, about an hour and a half out of Melbourne, their bearing on their trailer gets so hot that it burst into flame and then they pull over on the side of the road and the bushfire starts. It is a source of frustration to the CFA. I've had this explained to me several times.

Gaye Francis (03:49):

So I guess from a due diligence viewpoint, we know that bushfire starts. So then what are all the controls that you can put in place? And I think one of the interesting things about this is it's really not the threat of the bushfire itself, it's the interaction of a community or people with the bushfire, isn't it? And I think we talked about it in the planning, urban planning, episode where we talked about major hazards. It's that vulnerability and what do you call it, the peri-urban.

Richard Robinson (04:19):

Where is the bush and the people who interact. And I think I mentioned in the previous episode, if you read Luke's Bushfires in Australia from CSIRO, he sort of points out in the 1930's if you're around Melbourne, it was Sandringham sort of places. And then in the 1980's and 90's it was Gembrook and places like that. And in 2010, it was Marysville and Kinglake and places like that where people have been moving into the bush and there was poor access, poor water, all those sorts of things. But a very nice place to live otherwise.

Gaye Francis (04:51):

I've even noticed on the news and talking about people are going out to live in those places, but they're not necessarily "country people". If you've been involved in a bushfire, you move on, you typically don't rebuild, you move on.

Richard Robinson (05:07):

You move back into the suburbs because you don't do it twice.

Gaye Francis (05:12):

So the people that are living in these areas are often newbies. So I've noticed even on the commercial radio and news and TV at the moment, they're doing a lot of educational pieces around that (e.g.) prepare your house -- like you went down to your daughter's on the weekend and made sure everything was cleared around the house and make sure you've got a plan on those days. How are you going to evacuate? So I thought what we'd do is we just go through, I guess your threatened vulnerability assessment. So you were doing due diligence all the way back in those time.

Richard Robinson (05:43):

Well we didn't call it that!

Gaye Francis (05:46):

But it was the right thing.

Richard Robinson (05:48):

But just making sure that all reasonable practical controls were in place. And I think the one that always jumped out, because it was partly because Kevin was a town planner was that the way the bushfires happened, you get a hot northerly and you get the bushfire coming south, and then when they get the wind change, it goes from west to east. So if you're on the downside of that long skinny fire, you're suddenly at risk. So from the point of view of a township in the bush, you don't want developments to the north or the west and golf courses to the west, where the grass keeps mowed and things like, that just gave you a big fire break. Or potato fields or something that's not there at the height of summer.

Gaye Francis (06:20):

Right. And is that carried through, do you think, to most townships now?

Richard Robinson (06:25):

Oh, that's what, when you read these bushfire risks and best practice guides and all these sorts of things, I think it's pretty much doing it. They're ignoring the likelihood side as you've pointed out, and it's all being driven by the vulnerability on a criticality basis.

Gaye Francis (06:41):

So I guess that's part of the protection. We talked about REFCLS potentially as an ignition source control in relation to powerlines.

Richard Robinson (06:51):

And that's likelihood though.

Gaye Francis (06:53):

I guess the golf courses and stuff is part of the prevention, but a lot of work is being done around mitigations, isn't it? The minimisation of the consequences. And I think after Black Saturday, a lot of the building codes put in place bushfire attack level, and there are requirements to then...

Richard Robinson (07:12):

Building control how the house should be resistant. Like you should have a tin roof, desirably, clear your gutters out, fill them with water if you feel like it, and have a non-combustible structure.

Gaye Francis (07:21):

And I think they were trying to stop the fire getting under the house as well. So you had to have it sort of blocked in so there was no distance. So there's been a lot of work done around those things. Bushfires aren't going to go away with climate change.

Richard Robinson (07:36):

Not it south west Australia.

Gaye Francis (07:36):

With climate change they're saying that they're becoming more likely.

Richard Robinson (07:41):

More intense too. But that's part to do with the fact we haven't been doing enough burning off. I mean, it's one of the complications everyone recognises that you should keep fuel loads down, but the window to do the fuel load burning (is difficult) because the fire season is getting longer, there's less time to do that. And you might recall there's been some instances where it was the burning off that got away that's caused the fire, which was obviously somewhat of an embarrassment. So it's actually got complicated and it's not getting any easier. And as we also commented too, that the number of volunteers for the CFA is probably generally declining, and there's some other issues associated with that that they haven't been thought through.

Gaye Francis (08:17):

So the ability to do some of this planning work that they've relied on to minimise the consequences is getting harder and harder to do.

Richard Robinson (08:24):

Remember the CFA was created as a result of 1939 fires. And one of the consequences of that was that small fires tend to get put out, but it's when the big fire happens, there's not enough firefighters to go around and to stop the small fire from becoming a big fire. So that there's sort of an obvious size. And the way we've been doing it, it's like, I think I commented since they've gone days of total fire ban, there's never not been a black ash or red day that wasn't on a total fire ban day. And the ability to call it now and particularly catastrophic days got really, really good. So talking to my daughter, the plan is on a total fire ban day, the kids and my daughter are probably gone. If it's a catastrophic day, everybody's gone.

Gaye Francis (09:07):

And you've got to go early, because we've talked about that in other cases as well as it's the access to some of these places that is really tricky. And the ability for people to get out if they leave it too late almost disappears.

Richard Robinson (09:21):

You can't, because there's trees down everywhere. I mean, the storms of winter, they've got trees down all over the place and you have to do a U-turn and go around the other way.

Gaye Francis (09:29):

So I guess our advice, if you want to call that, prep your house, but if you are given a warning to leave on a bushfire day, I think that's probably...

Richard Robinson (09:41):

And the way they're doing it now, you will get a message on your phone.

Gaye Francis (09:44):

It's very clever, isn't it? They've done a lot of work around that.

Richard Robinson (09:48):

So yeah, from our point of view, I mean, it was a generation ago, I wrote that paper, and so far as we could tell, most of the things in that paper have been done. It's sort of interesting to say all these things at that time, although at another level it's a little bit frustrating.

Gaye Francis (10:02):

I think the important thing is to make sure that we can continue to talk about these things though, because they don't go away.

Richard Robinson (10:09):

No, exactly.

Gaye Francis (10:10):

As you said, the bushfire only comes up every 25 or 30 years, and unless you've been involved, you don't sort of think that it's going to happen to you. But all of these controls remain robust and remain relevant that I think it's really important to keep talking about them.

Richard Robinson (10:30):

Yep.

Gaye Francis (10:30):

So thank you for joining us today, Richard, and we'll see you next time. Thanks everyone.

Richard Robinson (10:36):

Thanks Gaye.

Town Planning Disasters: The need for consquence planning, not risk planning

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 9

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis, discuss town planning disasters and the need for consequence planning.  

This follows Gaye’s recent conference paper at the International Public Works Conference where she detailed the VCAT decision around the major hazard facility and the planning law associated with it. But in this podcast, they reflect on other natural hazards like floods, bushfires, dam breaks and how town planning can address (or fail to address) these before they happen.

The biggest question they ask is rather than a focus on recovery, why aren't we building resilience into our infrastructure and/or seeing how we, as a community, build to be able to withstand some of these disasters? And how this is a shift from thinking from risk planning to consequence planning. 

They also discuss the mismatch between town planning requirements and WHS/OHS legislation. 

Access the episode’s full transcrip below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Ep 9 (S3) of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss town planning disasters, especially in relation to natural hazards. We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, please email us at admin@r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:31):

Hi Richard, welcome to a podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:33):

Morning Gaye. How are you?

Gaye Francis (00:34):

Good, thank you. Today we thought we'd talk about, and we had a bit of an argument about what we were actually going to call this podcast, but we wanted to talk about town planning disasters, and it really leads on from the conference paper that I gave at the International Public Works Conference a couple of weeks ago (May 2024). And I think we've talked about that. That was really about the VCAT decision around the major hazard facility and the planning law associated with that. But we are sort of reflecting on that there's a number of natural hazards out there, floods, earthquake, fire.

Richard Robinson (01:08):

Bushfires. Dam break, that's not quite natural, but go on.

Gaye Francis (01:13):

And we are looking at how town planning can address these sort of things before they happen.

Richard Robinson (01:20):

 Or fail to (address). I think the point you're trying to make.

Gaye Francis (01:23):

And one of the key takeaways from the conference that I got was everybody was talking about "building back better", but there was also an interesting way that they were saying; we are focusing a lot on recovery from these incidents, but why aren't we building resilience into our infrastructure or seeing how we can as a community build to be able to withstand some of these disasters? And we sort of reflected on it because we've worked with bushfires over the years and we've worked with dam breaks and a number of other natural hazards, and it's always a very interesting discussion.

Richard Robinson (02:04):

That's correct. I mean, if you just take bushfires for example. I mean, one of the things that kind of frustrates us, I mean we've been working in that space for the last, well, for me since 1983 because I used to write papers on the Ash Wednesday fires. And one of the things, if you read Luke's "Bushfires in Australia", the guy from CSIRO, one of the weird things he sort of points out is that the bushfire and the party at risk changes as the city grows. So in the 1930s, the bushfire risk was Sandringham in Melbourne; in the 1970s, it was in the Dandenongs and Eltham and places like that; and then as the city kept growing, which is what happened in 2009/2010, it was King's Lake and Marysville where a whole lot further people had moved further out. And the point was people wanted to move into the bush, they want to enjoy it, they want the kangaroos and the birds and everything else. The dark side of all that though, of course, is that if the bushfire comes through, you're peculiarly at risk. And so it's all those peri-urban areas that are always at risk, and that was the case. And you can just see it as the different bushfires come through. The other frustration we had, and just to give you an for instance, I mean I remember writing papers in the, would've been 1985, I think, so before your time.

Gaye Francis (03:10):

Well before my time, Richard.

Richard Robinson (03:12):

Thank you, Gaye! Where we were sort of pointing out that... You see the way that Bushfires in Australia happen, you've got a hot northly coming down, so you've got skinny fires progressing south, however they started. And then the change comes through and you get the wind coming from the west and you get these huge bushfires. So whether it was just a skinny front coming south, if you haven't put it out by the time the change comes through, all of a sudden you've got a broad fire front coming from the west to the east. And if you're obviously fighting a fire on the downwind side, when the high winds come through on a very hot day, you're in serious trouble.

(03:43):

But from the point of view of town planning, the logical conclusion was you should put fire breaks to the north and west of the town. And a logically and simple way to do that from land use planning point of view is golf courses and potato patches and other things like that, which tend to be bare or don't have a huge growth on them during the bushfire season. Now that was done in 1985 - we were busy writing those sort of papers with my former business partner, Kevin Anderson. In fact, it was writing those papers, which got us together in the first place.

Gaye Francis (04:09):

So there's ideas and controls that you can put in place to mitigate or to almost prevent some of these natural disasters, well not prevent the natural disasters, but the consequences on urban areas.

Richard Robinson (04:22):

But it's consequence planning, not risk planning. You see, that's where they all went muddled. I mean, you might recall, and we're not going to go too much detail, but there's a number of councils who've let the houses be built up to the bottom of the toe of a dam. Either the water's higher than the roof of the house. Now if anything happens to the dam, those people are not well. Now how on earth the flood overlay from the dam wasn't somehow properly laid out so the town planners understood what the key hazards were? I simply do not understand. And that seems to pop up all over the place. I mean, the ones we're talking about were major hazards, which we talked about at length: dams, bushfires, airports. All these sorts of people create these overlays and for reasons that are obscure to us, well, maybe it's not, it's because they keep using the term risk rather than consequence. If you start looking at consequence modeling, it becomes pretty obvious just how bad this could be.

Gaye Francis (05:12):

But I also think there's been a huge mismatch and we're noticing that even more and more between the requirements of town planning, that seems to be a really insular solo siloed activity. And it's not taking into account all of the things. It's really just taking into account the town planning matters, and it's not taking in the Work Health and Safety (WHS) legislation or OHS legislation. It's not taking in some of those overlays that you would expect a community or town planning to have over it.

Richard Robinson (05:45):

Well, I think that's what got us stumped. I mean, we've mentioned this before. Victoria adopted the SFAIRP approach in 2004 with the OHS Act. So we've got our 20 years now because it's 2024, and that's sort of the time it takes to change. Most other jurisdictions only started this in 2011. They've got another 10 years before they get there. And we just sort of observed from discussion with a lawyer in another place, which we perhaps won't talk too much about, but that they were using the HIPAP guidelines for New South Wales still. Well, the HIPAP guidelines died when the WHS legislation became the legislation of major hazards and dangerous goods, which isn't the case in all jurisdictions. That's where it gets a bit messy, but in most jurisdictions, that's the case. And so using target levels of risk and safety and saying the risk consequence by likelihood is the way to do it, rather than just using consequence modeling, they're still doing it. And weirdly, because of the planning appeals process, if you're just planning according to planning legislation, you apparently can't invoke the WHS legislation, which seems to be overarching, I would have thought.

(06:47):

But engineers aren't allowed to address legal matters. You may recall.

Gaye Francis (06:51):

We were told to keep in our own box, yes, or own lane. But I think one of the frustrating things, and even talking to some of our associates about it is when you are dealing with earthquakes and bush fires, we know that there's controls that you can put in place.

Richard Robinson (07:09):

High consequences low likelihood events.

Gaye Francis (07:11):

And it's becoming more and more important for, let's say climate change. We know what the consequences of that are, and there are controls that we can put in place. So why aren't we just doing it rather than arguing about what the hazard's going to be?

Richard Robinson (07:25):

Because it's the commerciality of it. It's like when you go and sell your power network to private equity, private equity says we want maximum dollars. That means you optimise your network for the greatest efficiency. You don't optimise it for credible worst case scenarios. For example, the N -1. N -1 means if you lose a major power conductor somewhere, the grid should just be able to hold up with that single failure. Okay? N -2, you start expecting blackouts of some sort, but an N -1 failure, everything should keep going. But that costs more. If you're just going for cost effectiveness for a rare event, and it's outside the investment horizon. This is where the energy regulator, the Australian economic regulator, it's unfortunately they call themselves the energy regulator, because basically anything outside the five year investment horizon pretty much gets sort of kiboshed, anything that's going to go wrong after that, you just buy insurance. Well, that doesn't stop the consequence. Buying insurance tries to repair the damage, which is your point. It doesn't actually prevent the problem from occurring in the first place. And it does seem to me that... Well, we had that conversation. I think it's the difference between stakeholder equity and private equity. Private equity just wants profit, doesn't care how it's made, and it would use a risk-based approach. Whereas stakeholder equity says, we want you to plan for disasters and make the place resilient.

Gaye Francis (08:46):

And I think that would give councils a lot more tools and you would see a different type of build-set and the location of things in town planning matters.

Richard Robinson (08:56):

Well, even the developers, if they were sort of forced. And in a sense, the WHS legislation forces that because you have to consider your neighbours. That's the intention of it.

Gaye Francis (09:05):

That is the intention. I haven't seen it in practice very often though.

Richard Robinson (09:08):

Not from a developer. No.

Gaye Francis (09:11):

No. And that makes it really tricky. I mean, even I can use the example of my sister lives in a bushfire zone and they're in a newer estate...

Richard Robinson (09:21):

Bushfire overlay zone.

Gaye Francis (09:22):

.. overlay zone, and one of the optional extras when they were building a house was to put tanks and fire resistant materials on and things like that. And some of them were compulsory, but others were optional extras. And when you're in those zone, maybe these things don't have to be optional extras. Maybe they are just a minimum level of protection that's required in those areas.

Richard Robinson (09:46):

Well, that's what, that's in theory what they do. But the point, as we've went through in one of the previous podcasts, that standards are the minimum, rhey're not recognised good practice. And I think that's part of the problem everybody's got. If you're designed to a standard, it will almost certainly be substandard, in effect, because there'll be twiddling with the rules to try and get some kind of deem to comply outcome, and it just doesn't work. But that's from our point of view, there's a failure to design and town planning should be the high level design process, and it's not. What it's come down to is a series of legislative or case law rules about: if you do this, you'll thread it through the legal eye of the needle, and if you do it this way, you won't. So that's what happens.

Gaye Francis (10:30):

Well, they're almost doing it as a compliance, aren't they? It's a compliance audit that if you meet the requirements of X, Y, Z, then tick, you get your planning approval, doesn't make sure that the building being approved is the best that it could be for the issues that it may have to face.

Richard Robinson (10:48):

It certainly doesn't assure that all reasonable practicable controls are in place, which is the purpose of all the WHS/OHS legislation out there.

Gaye Francis (10:56):

And I think that's really important going forward, because I think we all will all have an understanding that with climate change, some of these natural disasters and events are going to become more likely and more severe and going forward, we can't keep doing it the way that we've been doing it.

Richard Robinson (11:14):

It's not human nature though. We like disasters.

Gaye Francis (11:19):

<laighs> Okay, I might not be in that group.

Richard Robinson (11:22):

You're speaking as a mother.

Gaye Francis (11:25):

So I think the due diligence approach is the way to do it, and we know what the consequences are, and we know that controls can be put in place. So let's just make it basic.

Richard Robinson (11:35):

Not only just controls put in there (that are) reasonable, and if you do it at a planning stage, it's very cost effective. It's not expensive. I think that's what frustrates us the most, and that's what actually what frustrates the courts after the event, it all goes horribly wrong and in hindsight, it turned out, yep, there was a cost effective solution that could have been in place, which had it been in place, would've saved the day. And the question is, why it wasn't, and I've got to say the way it's going, it was because of the way we go about town planning.

Gaye Francis (12:02):

So I think town planning has to come out of its silo and have that broader strategic view on things as a community.

Richard Robinson (12:10):

But they consider themselves strategic already. That's what's weird about it.

Gaye Francis (12:14):

Okay. That hasn't been our experience, but we might leave it at that, Richard! Thanks for joining us today. Hope you found that interesting, and we'll see you next time.

Richard Robinson (12:25):

Thanks.

Nuclear Power Safety: How The Finnish Get It Right Before They Proceed

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 2, Episode 9

In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss nuclear power safety with reference to Finland. 

Gaye shares her personal experience as an exchange student in Finland and her connection to the Olkiluoto Power Station. They discuss Finland's approach to nuclear power, including their focus on managing nuclear waste with a whole-of-life appreciation for nuclear power, and that they involve the community as stakeholders in decision-making. They also highlight Finland's commitment to safety and their precaution-based approach rather than risk-based. 

Read full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss nuclear power safety, especially in relation to Finland and how they focus on getting it right before proceeding.

(00:18):

Please enjoy their chat, and if you do, please give us a rating. Also, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you have any comments or topic ideas, please get in touch via admin@r2a.com..com.au.

Richard Robinson (00:36):

Welcome Gaye to your session on nuclear safety.

Gaye Francis (00:40):

Oh, thank you, Richard.

Richard Robinson (00:42):

Now, the reason why we're doing this is that a long time ago, or perhaps a short time ago, depending on how you look at these things, Gaye was an exchange student of Finland and one of her host fathers was in fact the safety manager manager for the Olkiluoto, you better pronounce it more correctly.

Gaye Francis (00:59):

Olkiluoto

Richard Robinson (01:01):

Olkiluoto Power Station, which is a nuclear power station in Finland. Now interestingly, Gaye's taking her whole family, husband and two kids, on a holiday to Finland and she's going to go to the host family because they've been keeping communication ever since. And her daughters apparently deserve to see a real Christmas in Finland, which is about as chill as you're going to get!

Gaye Francis (01:25):

Hoping for a white Christmas, Richard.

Richard Robinson (01:26):

Really peculiarity, we're just doing some work for Tasports and it turns out that Tasports are having their two new ferries built at, I can't remember how you pronounce that exactly.

Gaye Francis (01:36):

Rauma.

Richard Robinson (01:37):

Rauma, which is a town of about 5,000 people or something. It's not a big place. And you're actually staying where they're building the ferries for Tasmania, which is even more peculiar.

Gaye Francis (01:48):

Yes, Finland's not a very big place, but they do some pretty heavy lifting in industrial terms.

Richard Robinson (01:54):

Well, more than that, just in educational terms, Finland's one of those remarkable places where teachers have, for example, have a very high standing, a very high status. And university, if you qualify, it doesn't matter where on the planet you are, if you qualify, you can be educated, there free, but you have to obviously achieve the academic standard that Finns expect of you. And they just find that that approach to life actually substantially enhances the way in which people look at them in the world. I've also been advised because there was an interesting sort of holiday trip going from up the Gulf of Bothnia to St. Petersburg a while back, and I made some passing remark and Gaye just looked at me blankly and said: Finns do not holiday in Russia.

Gaye Francis (02:33):

They do not holiday in Russia, that's definitely right.

Richard Robinson (02:37):

I'm sure that's probably reinforced in recent times.

Gaye Francis (02:42):

So back to the topic. <laughs>

(02:45):

So one of the interesting things that, and I gave a presentation probably 2015, so a number of years ago, and it was when the nuclear power debate was happening in Australia and I said to Richard, I don't understand. You know the Finns have had nuclear power for a long time.

(03:01):

As you said, I went on exchange and that was 1990 that I went on exchange. So during high school. So the Finns have had nuclear power for a very long time and been able to manage it.

Richard Robinson (03:13):

But they actually do it better than that because they're one of the few places that actually decide that they're going to manage their own nuclear waste.

Gaye Francis (03:18):

They do. And that's what I think one of the key things for me is, they really have a whole-of-life appreciation of nuclear power. So their main research area is actually where to put the spent fuel rods and how they're going to store that and manage that in years to come.

(03:40):

So Olkiluoto is on the west coast of Finland, quite down south about four hours from Helsinki, and I stayed in a little town called Eurajoki, and it's in the municipality of Eurajoki, and the community are definitely aware of the nuclear power station in their community and they actually lobby for it. One of the interesting things was, and we've talked about stakeholders and interested parties before, the community is definitely a key stakeholder in the decisions of the nuclear power station and whether new reactors are built and things like that. And they actually have a right of veto. So if the community doesn't think that this should be done, then it's not done, which is really interesting.

(04:28):

The other thing, so Olkiluoto 3 has just come online in, I'm just looking at my date here, April 2023, it started full regular production, and that's after an 18 year delay. So it was approved in 2005 and it's just come online in 2023. And one of the key reasons was there was some safety concerns around it and basically the regulator in Finland said: No-go until you can prove otherwise that this is safe to go.

Richard Robinson (04:57):

So the commercial imperatives do not rule the day, the safety imperatives rule the day.

Gaye Francis (05:01):

Yes, absolutely. And there's a lot of media and stuff online that basically says this has gone way, way over budget as you could imagine with an 18 year delay and cost blowouts and everything. But the safety regulator, which is the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Finland, just basically said no go. And it's sort of interesting because for Finland, as Richard said, they used to get about 60% I think, of their coal from Russia. So they don't want to rely on Russia to get coal to produce electricity, but they're also marketing this, or I dunno whether marketing's the right word, but also advertising this as one of the greatest single climate acts in Finland. So they're going to nuclear power to address the climate change issues.

Richard Robinson (05:54):

Well, also they're up to, I think on EVs, I think aren't they over 50% now? I think.

Gaye Francis (05:59):

Yeah, so they're very, very advanced. And I think when we had this conversation in Australia, I just feel that there's a lack of maturity. Yes, there's been some pretty awful incidents around nuclear power and there's been some lessons learned, but there's some countries that are really, really doing it well that we could learn from. And I don't think you have to start from scratch to be able to plan for that.

(06:26):

But one of the key takeaways for Finland was that that final disposal, and they basically go from reactor safety and the management of the spent fuel. It's actually all done onsite in Eurajoki at the facility. So it's disposed of in sealed, encapsulated steel containers and then finally disposed of, just put in the bedrock.

Richard Robinson (06:58):

Yeah, down quite a decent distance down.

Gaye Francis (06:59):

Oh, very, very distant distance down.

Richard Robinson (07:03):

But they specifically dug that out for the purpose of containing...

Gaye Francis (07:07):

Spent fuel rods.

Richard Robinson (07:08):

And it's so far down that the background radiation and all those sorts of things is not relevant.

Gaye Francis (07:12):

That's right.

(07:13):

This is monitored and they've got QA systems in place to monitor their staff for safety, for radiation exposure. They also do community testing and stuff like that. I have been down into the nuclear power site and you get kitted up in all your (protection wear). You go down in a very, very a bus sort of thing. And it's very interesting as a geeky engineer!

Richard Robinson (07:39):

Well, you compare that to the way which you might remember the low level radiation storage facility we vaguely had a consideration of in Victoria, you might recall that? And so far as I know our low level radiation is still being stored in drums out in the open in various places, and we don't actually have a way of disposing of it. And we've just withdrawn from the whole thing.

Gaye Francis (07:59):

So sort of away and forgotten.

Richard Robinson (08:02):

Yep. Well, we haven't done anything about it, so presume it's just accumulating in the wrong places around the place. And yet if you look at the way the Finns do it, you say: We've got a problem, let's think it through and let's get it right and do it properly the first time.

Gaye Francis (08:15):

And it is that very much precaution-based approach. It's not a risk-based target level of safety approach. It's either right and you proceed or it's not there and you don't go any further until it's fixed.

(08:31):

Which I think is a very, and as I said, I went to Finland in 1990 and the power station had been there for a long time. And one of my host dads was the safety manager there and they were passionate about it. It was safety first at all costs for both their workers and the community as a whole.

Richard Robinson (08:52):

Yeah, it is rather interesting, isn't it? I mean, this is the second time you've been back, I believe?

Gaye Francis (08:56):

I've been back three or four or five times to Finland. It was a life-changing experience exchange and yeah, I've taken my husband, he's been to the nuclear power station. He did say to me that probably not a day out for the two girls at 10yo and 7yo, but maybe next time I take them back I could get them involved in that. But we might do the drive by the Rauma shipyards and have a look at the new Spirit of Tasmania being built. That'd be pretty cool.

Richard Robinson (09:26):

Yeah, it's just fascinating, isn't it? It's fascinating that the Tasmanians, when they went scouring the planet to build ferries basically decided on Finland. It does tell you a bit about the society and the culture as a whole, and it does reflect a bit on the Nordics generally. I mean, as I said (in previous episode), I was at the AMPI conference, the Australasian Marine Institutes, as a keynote speaker and the majority of the women marine pilots were Nordics, I've got to say that. And that was just an obvious thing. And they talk about particularly well educated and competent people. You just realised how obvious it was.

Gaye Francis (09:59):

It's just part of their life. I mean, you jump on a ferry between Finland and Sweden, you jump on a ferry between Estonia and Finland. That's just getting around on ships is what you do.

(10:13):

So I hope you found that interesting. That's sort of just a little bit of a takeaway that I had from my time in Finland. And as an engineer, I always recoil a little bit when we don't even seem to be able to have a nuclear power debate in Australia. There's a lot of good stuff happening out there. And I think that we can learn from other cultures and other places as well.

Richard Robinson (10:40):

I think the Finns, particularly in their educational program. In one of my former lifes, I sort of started the education branch in Victoria division of Engineers' Australia, and getting the engineers interested in education, the philosophy, education, I found it quite a difficult thing to do. And I've always, always been remarkably impressed with the Finns. I forget which Australian University has got a Finnish connection. Actually, I remember seeing it advertised at Melbourne Airport when I was coming out one time.

Gaye Francis (11:04):

Okay. I'm not sure.

Richard Robinson (11:05):

I can't remember, but one of the Australian universities has.

Gaye Francis (11:09):

There you go. So thank you for joining us again, and we'll be back next time with hopefully another interesting podcast.

Richard Robinson (11:15):

Thank you.

The Contest of Ideas - Has Australia gone backwards in embracing SFAIRP?

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Episode 9, Season 1

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Gaye Francis & Richard Robinson discuss the contest of ideas and if Australia has gone backwards in embracing SFAIRP. They also observe how many Australian Standards contradict WHS legislation/OHS Act and how Standards appear to be stopping people and organisations demonstrating SFAIRP.

Transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:02):

In this latest episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, Due Diligence Engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis, talk about the contest of ideas and ask if Australia has gone backwards regarding embracing SFAIRP method.

(00:19):

We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also subscribe on your favourite podcast platform and please do check out the other episodes. If you have any feedback, please let us know. All details for Richard and Gaye are in the description of the podcast.

Gaye Francis (00:38):

Hi Richard.

Richard Robinson (00:40):

Hi Gaye.

Gaye Francis (00:40):

Welcome to another recording of our podcast. Today we're going to talk about something a bit different than we really haven't talked about in our podcast before, and that's around the contest of ideas.

Richard Robinson (00:53):

That's quoting John Howard from 2017 when he pointed out politics is supposed to be about the contest of ideas and not a public relations exercise.

Gaye Francis (01:02):

And we're sort of talking about it in the context of (that) we've been doing a bit of soul searching lately about what R2A (Richard & Gaye's business) is and what we're doing and where we are going. And I think the key thing that R2A has really prospered from over the years is that thought leadership stuff in the risk and due diligence space. And where we've been and where we've come from and where we're going I guess as the most important things. And I think there's been some observations, especially after Covid and the way that business has done after Covid, we thought we'd all be back to normal, whatever that normal was and pre-covid conditions by now. But I think business has really changed forever. I'm not sure that we'll ever get back to the way that business was done prior to Covid.

Richard Robinson (01:47):

Yeah. And there's a lot of factors in that that we're not too sure about. But see, one of the things we've noticed that people aren't, well, for example, buying books the way they used to. At best, they absorb things online. Everything's become a lot more short-term-ism, I don't know quite the way to put it, but everything comes in short sharp snaps now. You don't buy. Reading "War and Peace" was probably never a particularly popular exercise, but it's only something that some of us did some of the time.

Gaye Francis (02:13):

I think it's called a "now" society, which my children are very much about a now society -- we want it now and we don't want to wait for anything. And if it doesn't get you attention for more than, if you need attention for more than five minutes, then that's about it. But everything wants to be, you're right, easily accessible and people want it now, the information now.

Richard Robinson (02:34):

Correct. And they want the solution now too. But as we've commented, thinking is hard. And if you can get it now, why bother?

Gaye Francis (02:44):

Very much so. Very much so. I think in terms of where we are as risk, we always say we are risk and due diligence engineers and due diligence engineers. But I think due diligence has really gone into the governance space.

Richard Robinson (02:58):

Yes. And as we're just pointing out this governance space up with John Clark would be particularly pleased for you to use.

Gaye Francis (03:06):

So the space of governance and you use due diligence I guess to demonstrate that you have been, that you're showing governance in areas of safety projects, operations, all of those things.

Richard Robinson (03:17):

And that's precisely where our two little new books (Criminal Manslaughter & Project Governance) were aimed at. They were aimed at the governance space in those two particular domains, which were there for extracts out of the larger R2A (Due Diligence Engineering) text.

Gaye Francis (03:27):

So I'm not exactly sure what's happening, but we do seem to be spinning wheels at the moment in the risk space anyway. And I think even the ideas that Australia embraced 10 years ago around the SFAIRP methodology and things like that, I think we've gone backwards.

Richard Robinson (03:46):

I think that's correct, and we've been trying to figure out why that might be the case. To some extent we're putting it down to Brexit and a sudden influx of English colleagues and relying on the notion that the UK Health and Safety sector says ALARP and SFAIRP are the same thing. Which is absolutely quite fascinating and it's certainly true, and we've had lawyers tell this to us. I mean in the WHS and OHS legislation, for example, they only define reasonably practicable. They say you've got to eliminate risks so far as reasonably practicable (SFAIRP) and if you can't eliminate to reduce it so far as reasonably practicable, but the legislation only defines reasonably practicable. And we've always noted quite correctly that if every reasonable practical precaution is in place, then the risk associated with the hazard will be as low as reasonably practicable. The difficulty we've always had is that the process you use to do these two things is quite different. And that if you do use the hazard and risk-based approach to demonstrate

Gaye Francis (04:43):

as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP)

Richard Robinson (04:44):

you come up with a different list of recommendations and an effort and a whole lot of things involved. And if you go around the way that's required in the WHS legislation, it's the basic engineering philosophy -- observation. The meanings and the method results are only consequences depending on which method you used, you will get different results.

Gaye Francis (05:03):

And I think that's what the health and safety executive said in the UK wasn't it, that the basis of the two concepts is reasonably practical, but they are different. I'm not sure about WHS or Work Health and Safety legislation in the UK, whether they actually define it the same way that we do.

Richard Robinson (05:20):

Oh they do! The 1974 Act has got SFAIRP in the legislation.

Gaye Francis (05:25):

But then as other practitioners say, how can you say that the two are the same when they've been defined for different purposes by different groups of people. And the way that you'll be tested in the courts after the event is the SFAIRP approach. So courageous is one of the words that we would use to say (they're the same).

Richard Robinson (05:43):

The "Yes, Minister" of (courageous) term. Yes.

(05:46):

Now to that extent and the contest of ideas R2A, we've tended to walk around this in a polite way. And what we've noticed is in order to get people to think our way, we have to get the lawyers on side first. And we've never had any great problem doing that, although beating people over the head with lawyers is not necessarily the best way to start a starting position in life.

(06:06):

But what we're basically sort of concluded, we're going a bit further than that. There are now so many Standards that contradict the WHS (&OHS) legislation completely that is setting organisations up for a fall. The ones that notably we talk about are ISO 31000, the Risk Management Standard. And since that's mandated by government in all sorts of places, the fact that it actually stops people from actually demonstrating SFAIRP stuns us.

(06:32):

But IEC 61508, the Functional Safety Assessment Standard, it still uses target levels of risk and safety. You're not allowed to do that.

(06:39):

AS 5577, the Network Standard, that one's a classic because it's in one paragraph, it says you shall eliminate hazards so far as reasonably practicable and if you can't eliminate them, you've used them as low as reasonably practical. And the one paragraph, it's just unbelievable.

(06:54):

And then you've got AS 2885, the Pipeline Standard. We've had lots of discussions with the pipeline people. And I have to say their ALARP is looking suspiciously like SFAIRP, but they've still got the confusion with the terms.

(07:05):

And EG 0. There's another blindingly complicated one. We've been sort of complaining about that for the last 10 years. And we don't quite understand because if you actually contradict The Act, you can't go around having standards contradicting Act. And that means Standards Australia and the Board of Standards Australia really needs to get its act together. And from our point of view, Engineers Australia needs to pick up the Board of Standards Australia. The whole point of the Engineers Australia safety case guidelines to point out what you needed to do.

Gaye Francis (07:31):

To demonstrate diligence.

Richard Robinson (07:32):

As engineers. And since that's your intellectual body telling you if you go with an Australian Standard and ignore the Engineers Australia code of practice, as far as I know, engineers are setting themselves up for a colossal legal fall, but people are doing these things.

Gaye Francis (07:50):

I think also that people are using the Standards as license to trade. And when your regulator's asking you to do one thing... But people have stopped thinking. Just because a regulator tells you to do one thing doesn't mean that all of those other obligations that you're required to do disappear.

Richard Robinson (08:07):

Our experience is that regulators don't get it right, regularly.

Gaye Francis (08:11):

And there's no downfall for 'em either. There's no,

Richard Robinson (08:13):

Well, they might be publicly embarrassed when it goes wrong, but it's the organisation that suffers and the board and the relevant board that suffers the legal test.

Gaye Francis (08:20):

So I think there's a lot of wheel churning and wheel spinning going on because it's creating so much work for organisations to do, that they're just missing the picture, the big picture of the things that they really need to do to get on with doing their business safely.

Richard Robinson (08:36):

Correct. And we're sort of agog! I mean from our point of view, due diligence is a governance exercise. You can't always be right, but what the courts demand of you is that you're always diligent. And that's why we have suggested on a number of occasions in the past, for example, the Risk Engineering Society should become the Due Diligence Engineering Society because that is the legal duty of engineers.

Gaye Francis (09:02):

To be diligent.

Richard Robinson (09:03):

To be diligent. It's never been the duty to be risk engineers. The duty is to be due diligent engineers.

Gaye Francis (09:09):

And I think just going on from the risk as well, you got to make sure that you're addressing the vulnerability what can actually negatively impact your business rather than just the threat per-se.

Richard Robinson (09:25):

Yes. Well that was Bob Browning, one of our previous associates went to a lot of trouble explaining that's a security point of view. It's not the threat that counts, it's how you're vulnerable to the threat that counts. And we just had an interesting conversation this morning with the water authority to the effect that we are not entirely sure, but that distinction between the threat and where you're actually vulnerable and that you have to demonstrate due diligence for that vulnerability is what you need to do. Sometimes just because of the practical application, you will address the threat, but that's not always the way that it's done.

Gaye Francis (09:58):

I think the example there was climate change, wasn't it? So climate change is obviously a threat to many organisations, upcoming risk, but how does it actually impact your business going forward and what implications does that have for your business or consequences? And that's what you need to address in terms of the resilience and the availability of your system that you going forward with.

Richard Robinson (10:23):

Correct. And I think that was the other thing which was interesting in the conversation was, you see, the engineers have basically made a feast of hazard risk analysis for the last 30 years. But there's a lot of other different ways to go about this. And the really weird thing about this risk business, and I sort of think we've talked about this before, none of the techniques that people apply are in error. They will all give insight. It's just that this risk thing, the risk space, is a multidimensional creature and you can slice and dice it in all sorts of different ways and you will get the different insight. Where the systems are coming unstuck, so far as we can tell, is that people aren't thinking through what is the analysis type they need to get the answer that they require in order to demonstrate in governance terms that they've been diligent.

Gaye Francis (11:06):

And by getting different insight, they'll give you different insight as you said. But what's the most useful insight? And I think in doing that, you also now have to understand what some of the downfalls for each of the techniques are. Some have different, well, they all have different benefits, but you've got to understand the pitfalls of those techniques as well going forward. So you know what the limitations are and what aspects may be missing from that understanding.

Richard Robinson (11:33):

Well, that's just coming back to the Standards business and there's that quote I give you from the 1939 (or) 1937, I can't remember which one, was Chairman of Victorian Division of Engineers Australia, who pointed at the Standards have two purposes in life: To prevent fools from their folly and rogues from their roguery. And so far as I can tell the points he was trying to make was, you need to think through from first principles as an engineer competently how it ought to be. And then you test back against the Standard to make sure you haven't done anything stupid. Even the Standards I'm complaining about that miss the point of the WHS legislation doesn't mean to say they're entirely in error. There's lots of good bits and pieces in there. Because, remember, it's not a Standard that's recognised good practice it's the relevant ideas in the Standard that's recognised good practice.

(12:14):

But the first one, that's fools from their folly. And practically, if you're trying to hang a contractor who's hashed up a job the quickest way to do it's to say you're rotten sod, you haven't complied with the Standard, you're toast. Well that's rogues from their roguery. But you never want to go there. You want to get it right the first time. Diligence doesn't mean you're hanging people. Diligence means you get it right initially.

Gaye Francis (12:36):

And I think that's the key thing about the due diligence process. It's supposed to get you to enable you to get on with things and make things happen, which is what engineers are about making... changing things.

Richard Robinson (12:46):

And due diligence makes things happen. Risk analysis stops things from occurring.

Gaye Francis (12:51):

That's correct. We had lunch with an associate a couple of weeks ago and said, due diligence is really about, it's the laxative, it makes things happen more smoothly. Hadn't quite thought about due diligence engineers in that way. <laughing> That was a very interesting analogy. And it is. It's supposed to make things happen and get on with things. You've only got limited resources, limited time, limited budget, and what is the best option or optimal option going forward to achieve the things that you want to achieve. So that's why it's super critical to identify what you're trying to achieve, what are your options to get there and what are the best ones in those circumstances?

Richard Robinson (13:39):

Which is what the WHS legislation requires of you. We don't get why people use the Risk Management Standard in contradiction to the legislation. To us this is more than just courageous because this is willfully doing it. The fact that government agencies demand the risk management standard process when the WHS legislation specifically tells you not to do it, is proper reflection on the code of practice, which is also an error. But I think that's the subject of another podcast.

Gaye Francis (14:04):

I think that might be the subject of another podcast. So we've done a bit of a venting session today and just the frustrations of where things are at, but there is a lot of confusion out there and I think it feels like industry has gone backwards with the acceptance of SFAIRP going forward. And the processes that were being implemented and now being eroded, I think. And there's been a lot more emphasis on quantitative risk assessment.

Richard Robinson (14:36):

Correct. Using target levels of risk.

Gaye Francis (14:37):

Using target levels of risk and trying to characterise it. And as we've said on many, many occasions in our podcast and anyone that's ever listened to us before, you ask two risk experts to go and characterise the risk associated with something, you'll always come up with two answers. So which is the right answer?

Richard Robinson (14:54):

And it's always better to be roughly right than exactly wrong, which happens a lot.

Gaye Francis (14:59):

So all that we would say going forward in this is be careful of Standards.

Richard Robinson (15:06):

Think!

Gaye Francis (15:07):

You need to think these things through. There's a whole lot of tools and techniques out there that are useful techniques, but you have to understand the limitations of it. And it's not a one-size-fits-all tickbox exercise when it comes to due diligence and governance.

Richard Robinson (15:22):

And when it comes to the crunch and you're an engineer, a code of practice from Engineers Australia, your intellectual body, unless the Standard is called up by statute of regulation, the code of practice from your intellectual body will always have a higher standing in court than an Australian Standard.

Gaye Francis (15:40):

So thank you for joining us this afternoon. We hope you found it interesting and we hope that you can join us next time. Have a great afternoon. Bye. Thanks.

Richard Robinson (15:51):

Bye.