De-engineering of Technical Roles and Engineering Education & Philosophy (Season 2 Wrap)

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 2, Episode 10

In the final episode of Season 2, Richard and Gaye discuss the de-engineering of technical roles in organisations and engineering education and philosophy.

They reflect on their experience as expert witnesses at a recent hearing where technical knowledge was lacking in person, and they highlight the importance of having engineers involved in and/or advising on technical roles. They also discuss the de-engineering of organisations and the shift towards a more compliance-focused approach. They touch on the need for engineers to have a global view and the importance of questioning and thinking critically.  

Also discussed is the lack of emphasis on ethics in the engineering profession and the need for a holistic approach to problem-solving and the role of engineering philosophy in driving change. The episode concludes with a reminder of the importance of thinking and the need for engineers to embrace a philosophy of change.

 Read the 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 wrap up a few topics they've discussed throughout Season 2 and chat about de-engineering in organisations and engineering philosophy. Please enjoy the chat and if you do give us a rating. Also, don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, get in touch via admin@r2a.com.au and look out for Season 3.

Gaye Francis (00:37):

Hi Richard, welcome to our last podcast for Season 2.

Richard Robinson (00:41):

Welcome Gaye.

Gaye Francis (00:42):

Today we're not really sure what we're going to talk about. There's a few topics that we've sort of touched on in the podcast throughout this season and there's been some comments about de-engineering and engineering education, engineering philosophy, so we thought we'd make this a little bit of a mismatch.

Richard Robinson (01:02):

Well, and I think the core reason why it sort of popped up is when we were at the VCAT (Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal) hearing acting as an expert witness, the member actually asked the major hazards facility and the council and the major hazards regulator to provide information.

Gaye Francis (01:17):

Some technical information.

Richard Robinson (01:18):

Technical information. And what we sort of discovered was they all sent lawyers. There were no technical engineering type knowledge people there at all.

Gaye Francis (01:29):

Just clarifying that they weren't in the session, but our understanding was that the facility, the major hazard facility, had gone back to their technical people to confirm the understanding, but they were not represented as such at the hearings.

Richard Robinson (01:44):

And likewise with the major hazard regulator, the actual technical people giving the technical advice weren't there. They were being represented and interpreted by lawyers.

Gaye Francis (01:54):

Correct.

Richard Robinson (01:58):

And when it actually came down to the final hearing, in fact, I was the only technical expert witness there, which surprised me greatly because I would've thought the council, for example, would've thought to have their own technical expert witness and that was not the case. They were actually represented by a lawyer and a town planner officer.

Gaye Francis (02:21):

Who were both consultants to the council.

Richard Robinson (02:22):

Who were both consultants to the council.

Gaye Francis (02:24):

I think the other one was that they actually commented and said it during the hearing: Oh, we don't have that technical expertise.

Richard Robinson (02:31):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (02:33):

On a technical matter, which was a bit of a shock.

Richard Robinson (02:35):

Which was the whole point of the exercise. And obviously the town planner and the lawyer's knowledge of town planning, legal and past cases, and all that sort of thing, is obviously something which we had very little knowledge about and chose not to comment on at all. But when it actually came to the technical matters over-pressures and how these things would happen and what sort of controls you could put in engineering design and safety design, all these other matters, it simply wasn't considered, so far as we can tell from their point of view. Now, when you stand back and look at this, this is something that's been happening in local government for some time and we've noticed this all over the place. I mean, once upon a time you used to have the town clerk who did the administration and a municipal or city engineer who ran the outside things, but that means they also did planning permits, building permits and everything.

(03:24):

These days that's all been disaggregated and so now you have the building permits basically run by building surveyors and the planning permits run by town planners and you have no holistic overview of what can be done or how things could be done to manage things. And so when some curious recommendation, from our point of view, pops out to say the way to manage risk from an explosion overpressure is just to reduce the number of people that live there, rather than building the building so it can withstand and prevent the hazards from actually causing pain and suffering to people - it just wasn't contemplated so far as we could tell.

(03:59):

Now this is something that's been popping up all over the place. It actually has higher level consequences for your society. What seems to happen in local government, at least, is that all the engineers have basically been pushed into water and wastewater and sewage and stormwater, but they've all been pushed into silos. There's no overarching philosophy, engineering philosophy put in.

(04:21):

Now you might ask the question, what's engineering philosophy? I do have to report that as a group, engineers really haven't been that interested in the subject. I tend to mention it every now and then to you and you sort of roll your eyes at me, to be fair.

Gaye Francis (04:33):

Richard has been trying to write an engineering philosophy book and course for, I've been working with him for over 20 years and I think he's been trying to do it in all of that time since I've been working with him.

Richard Robinson (04:44):

Well, yes, and I keep trying different universities trying to get them interested and to say they're not particularly interested in me, but that's the way universities have gone - if you don't have a PhD these days, you really don't get much of a look into any of these courses, as we have discovered. It doesn't matter how intellectually useful, what you're saying is so far as we can tell.

Gaye Francis (05:01):

It is an academic qualification.

Richard Robinson (05:03):

Yeah, that's right. And I guess in that sense there used to be a fair transfer between industry and tertiary education and engineers. I haven't seen that occurring as much as it used to. I can quite distinctly remember I was at Monash as a student doing engineering, they actually appointed a professor who was definitely industry based and they did that as a matter of policy as I recall correctly. Whether that's still happening or not, I get the feeling it's not, I think academia has become very closed, let's put it that way.

(05:38):

Anyway, the point about all this though is you see what's engineering and what's engineering philosophy and what's engineering education about now? This is something I've had a bit to do about, I mean a long time ago before we started the risk engineering, well, it was the Loss Control section of the Management Branch of Victoria Division, which turned into the Risk Engineering Society, but we're also doing things running engineering education programs for engineers; CPD, basically, for engineers, and we got a lot of very interesting speakers, one of the talks was Bernie Callan giving me help on a couple of things too, because he was interested in the subject as well. But I also dug out some papers by Sir John Monash. He gave a very interesting paper on engineer education, his retiring address as the President of the Victoria Institute of Engineers, and he was explaining how the need for engineers to have sort of a global view on what was going on, and this was before he basically went off to the first World War and became a very successful General, because, again, he had a very global view of how things should be thought about.

(06:40):

Now, from my point of view, engineering philosophy has always been the philosophy of change, meaning if you don't like it, change it. And one of the characteristics of engineers, and I know I've talked to a number of spouses of engineers and one of the things they always observe about them, they've said, is when something they don't think is quite right, they go and fix it. They go and do something about it. That's one of the characteristics that they've always observed.

Gaye Francis (07:03):

I think it's a curiosity and ability to question things if you don't, you don't just take it as the status quo.

Richard Robinson (07:10):

But that's one of the problems we've been having with engineer education because we've been running some post-grad programs for different universities at different times and one of the things we've noticed is some of these graduate engineers we've been getting haven't been as curious or wanting to change as much. They just want whatever the information is so they can go and apply it, and want it to be a cookbook recipe and, if you like, that's one of the frustration we have with the whole ALARP business, from our point of view, there's a process; you use quantified risk assessment, use a target level of risk, if you don't satisfy your criteria, then you do something rather than sort of saying, is there something else that needs to be done?

Gaye Francis (07:45):

I think that's being extended more into industry as well. A number of clients that we talk to and potential clients that we talk to: What's the answer? What's the process to get the answer? And risk's one of those subjects that it's not a cookie cutter approach, it's not black and white. You will get subtly different answers to every problem you apply it to. And so you've got to think and thinking is hard (we touched on this in another podcast) and we've found that people want a process. What's the process that I need to do to get the answer? And I don't know whether it's because it's gone down a more compliance or an audit type process, black and white, it's right or wrong. But in risk it's not right or wrong. It's about thinking it through and putting in the best option that you can.

Richard Robinson (08:39):

Well, I think that's the point. Remember how we had promoted the Professor of Public Policy and Law from Cambridge University, David Howeth, and the point he made was, and this is where the big law firms in the UK and US have gone to, and that it's law as engineering and what he meant by that, and they're literally following the engineering design process: A client turns up they've got a problem or they want to do something, in the circumstances what are the options? Well, what are the options? And in the circumstances, which is the best? That's a straight-out engineering design option. It's not a cookie cutter approach in the sense of 'here's the process, we'll go through and we'll definitely get you the best answer', because you don't what the options are until you look for them. And then we don't what your circumstances are and so what might actually be the best thing to do at that time. And it can change.

Gaye Francis (09:27):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (09:29):

But that's the best advice you're going to get. Now that is what the Consulting Engineers used to do, but they've stopped calling themselves Consulting Engineers who've turned into Consult Australia. I don't quite understand what that is. And they've dropped their code of ethics. I mean for those of you don't remember these things, I do, but because I used to talk to Ben Fink, the Managing Director of GHD, he was very strong on this, to be a member of the ACA, the Consulting Engineers, the majority ownership had to be engineers who were corporate members of Engineers Australia. And the reason for that was to ensure that the code of ethics of Engineers Australia, the consulting engineering practice had to comply with the code of ethics of Engineers Australia, which basically said you had to put the interest of a client first. Once you just become owned by general shareholders, it's all about the money for the shareholders. Nobody cares about the ethics.

(10:18):

If to pull a plug on the job is the commercially intelligent thing to do for your shareholders, then you do that. Whereas from a consulting engineering viewpoint, you have to finish the job in the best interest of a client, even if it meant you might lose some money. And you can only do that if the majority of the directors are actually bound by a code of ethics. And then the question becomes what's a profession? Well, generally it's applying a code of ethics and if you can't apply a code of ethics, then what are you?

Gaye Francis (10:46):

But I think that has dropped down even in Engineers Australia, the code of ethics is not as promoted as it once was.

Richard Robinson (10:53):

Well, Ben Fink made it absolutely crystal clear to me, although he said there was three, although I think there's actually five. Stick to your area of competence, no kickbacks, he who pays you is your client, be responsible for your own negligence and give credit where credit's due. And wow, has that one been gone missing lately?

Gaye Francis (11:11):

Yes. And that was instilled in Richard and being Richard's business partner that had been instilled in me from a very, very young age as an engineer, young engineer. I think what we're also seeing, and maybe this is the reason why people are looking for more that cookie cutter approach and those systems and processes in place, is the idea that organisations are being de-engineered. We are coming across a lot of people in engineering roles or technical roles that don't have a technical background.

Richard Robinson (11:41):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (11:42):

And so they're looking for processes and systems to put in place to be able to understand, but they don't have the background to be able to question. Is that the right idea?

Richard Robinson (11:56):

That's one way of saying it.

Gaye Francis (11:59):

Of those in technical organisations. So we've come across quite a lot of people that are running big technical projects that don't have any technical background.

Richard Robinson (12:11):

It can be done if you have the right technical advice, but that means you're going to have the right people working with you.

Gaye Francis (12:15):

So it's about that team approach. Again, you can't do these things in isolation.

Richard Robinson (12:20):

I suppose there's two other points I'll just make in passing. There was this thing, I think it was the University of Wollongong actually who started it and then the medical faculties took it over, but one of the things they sort of said and it was a frustrations I had when I was doing engineering was that you were taught all this science basically and you were basically made an applied scientist, in effect, and all the ethics stuff and all the legal stuff that you need to know to be effective in practice, you learned after you'd got a qualification of some sort. And you'd just been pumped science at you and you didn't really understand what use it was going to be, and I've got to say an awful lot it wasn't of a great use the way my career went, it never made sense to me.

(12:58):

Now, the University of Wollongong, I think it was, decided that what they would do first was the first thing they ever give a bunch of engineers in first year the first thing you got was a design exercise and you found out what you needed to know in order to make it work. And then you need to work out, well, if I need to know this, I'd better go and study that. And that's what the medical faculty started doing. They take a bunch of first year students and show them some poor soul on a bed who's not well and they say: What's wrong with them?

Gaye Francis (13:26):

What are you going to do?

Richard Robinson (13:27):

And force them to understand what they needed to know in order to bring about a successful conclusion. I understand the medical, that's one of the reasons why we started an education branch in Victoria because we were trying to expand that sort of understanding to the local universities. Don't think it actually succeeded, although every now and then sometimes you see a spark of life in a different place you weren't expecting. But this overall philosophical view, it does seem to me to be important, still is. And the other way I think it might've popped up, if you start the engineering society as a whole, one of the consequences of trying to fix that is to start registering engineers. I would've preferred to be the other way around that the engineering philosophy was still endemic in society and the engineers weren't registered. But if the only way to actually get the engineering philosophy back into the system is to register them and force it back into the system that way, then that might be a necessary consequence. But I'm still not absolutely sure that's going to work.

Gaye Francis (14:23):

But that's not what they're using registration for engineers for. It's a liability.

Richard Robinson (14:29):

No... But it has that consequence whether or not that's what was intended. And certainly the way the engineers were going about it, it's more about being a status thing rather than a functional thing. Whereas I'm more interested functionally. But it's like us, we don't find that being registered in Queensland or Victoria is essential to us because from the point of view of signing off on the design, which is where the crunch really comes, we can't do that anyway. And by the time we've finished doing our due diligence approach, everybody's got to have agreed that it's a good idea and then the individual design flows from that.

Gaye Francis (15:01):

Yes. So I think taking all of this and wrapping up our last podcast for the season, it's really about engineering is about that philosophy of change and being able to change things. And to be able to change things, you've got to think.

Richard Robinson (15:16):

Well, Karl Popper in is a book Objective Knowledge, he makes the point, he gives an example of a mechanical engineer and said: Look, when you're designing a society, no mechanical engineer would design a car without testing it hard and running it through all sorts of things. You don't just get the design, get it right the first time and everything works. You work hard to make it function. I mean, (Elon) Musk just got his rocket off again, they both blew up, but the separation that got into space, it really is a progressive evolutionary design and I suspect the next one will actually get there. This takes time and it's hard work. Societal change and issues require the same effort. And for the life of me, I've never understood how that understanding which sort of exists in philosophy, generally, isn't understood to apply in engineering philosophy. Philosophical terms too. But that's just me, obviously not everybody frets about this stuff.

Gaye Francis (16:19):

Alright, so I think on that note, we might finish our podcast for today. Richard, Thank you for joining us for Season 2. We hope you've enjoyed it! And we will be back for Season 3 very soon.

Richard Robinson (16:33):

Thanks Gaye.

Gaye Francis (16:34):

Thanks Richard.

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.

Safety Culture & Women's PPE

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 2, Episode 8

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

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

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

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

Full episode transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

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

(00:22):

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

Gaye Francis (00:39):

Hi Richard and welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:43):

Hi Gaye. We're back again.

Gaye Francis (00:45):

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

(01:17):

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

Richard Robinson (01:43):

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

Gaye Francis (01:52):

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

(02:44):

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

Richard Robinson (03:26):

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

Gaye Francis (03:30):

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

(04:22):

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

Richard Robinson (05:05):

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

Gaye Francis (05:09):

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

Richard Robinson (05:12):

Yea, well!

Gaye Francis (05:13):

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

Richard Robinson (05:24):

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

Gaye Francis (05:50):

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

(06:10):

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

Richard Robinson (06:21):

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

Gaye Francis (06:28):

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

Richard Robinson (06:48):

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

Gaye Francis (06:58):

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

Richard Robinson (07:12):

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

Gaye Francis (07:18):

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

(07:55):

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

(08:51):

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

Richard Robinson (09:08):

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

Gaye Francis (09:47):

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

Richard Robinson (10:19):

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

Gaye Francis (10:39):

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

Richard Robinson (10:59):

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

Gaye Francis (11:10):

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

Richard Robinson (11:14):

It does.

Gaye Francis (11:15):

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

Richard Robinson (11:30):

Thanks Gaye.

Has WHS Legislation & Risk Management Standards stopped people thinking?

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 2, Episode 7

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss whether the WHS legislation and Risk Management Standards have hindered critical thinking in organisations. 

They observe that some organisations have become stagnant and resistant to change, relying on third-party consultants to handle risk management instead of actively engaging in the process themselves. They emphasise that risk management should be a line management function and that organisations need to adopt processes and procedures rather than simply outsourcing them. 

They also discuss the importance of curiosity in risk management and the need for organisations to embrace a variety of tools and techniques to gain different insights into risk issues. They caution against relying solely on single processes and techniques, as they may not capture all potential risks, particularly rare critical ones. 

Read the full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan Barrow (00:03):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss whether the WHS legislation and risk management standards have stopped people thinking. We hope you enjoy their chat. If you do, please give us a rating. Also, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, and if you have any feedback or topic ideas, get in touch via admin@r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:43):

Hi Richard. Welcome to another podcast session. Today we're going to talk about has the WHS and risk management standard stopped people thinking?

Richard Robinson (00:55):

Yes, and that is a big subject and it's one which has actually puzzled us greatly because we've been watching a lot of organisations go into a form of stasis, which apparently is a word which Gaye doesn't use very often, but by stasis I mean they've actually got a fixed process and they're not going to change it even though there's evidence to say they possibly should.

Gaye Francis (01:16):

Or it's not being as useful as it could be in giving the results that they needed to deliver.

Richard Robinson (01:21):

And we've wondered why this might be the case. And we've noticed with a couple of large organisations that what seems to have happened is that this whole risk area has become so important to senior management that they've basically said, well, look, this is all too hard for us, so what we're going to do is employ people, put a process in place and it'll all happen and we won't have to think about it anymore.

Gaye Francis (01:40):

But when you say employ people, you mean third parties as in consultants or advisors that give the advice and then walk away?

Richard Robinson (01:46):

Well, they actually try to, yes. And they walk away. And our observational, the whole point of the WHS legislation and environmental legislation and company law is to say, no, you can't walk away if you are the decision maker, if you are the mind of the corporation, you have to actually be responsible. And this whole thrust of legislation the last 10 years has been hammering that point harder and harder and harder.

Gaye Francis (02:07):

And I think we've covered it in another podcast, is that risk management is a line management function.

Richard Robinson (02:14):

It's always been that.

Gaye Francis (02:15):

And that's where the reliability.

Richard Robinson (02:17):

That was that point I failed to mention in another session because I do remember going to an AREMA (American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association) conference, it must've been the late 1990s, and I was listening to all these insurance people and they'd expanded themselves into risk management because that's how that sort of area came from where the risk management came from. My question was, when are you going to drop the insurance term and just make it risk management and make risk management the line management function? If you've ever asked a question at a large conference and the speakers have just looked back at you, the panel, and it's been a stony silence, that was the one that was the stony silence.

Gaye Francis (02:50):

Right. So you didn't get a response?

Richard Robinson (02:52):

I did not get a response!

Gaye Francis (02:56):

Now you've lost my train of thought. Okay. So yeah, it's a line management function and the organisation has to adopt the processes. And the one thing that we have seen fail is that you can get third parties to put in processes and procedures to do things, but unless the organisation adopts it, then it's useless.

Richard Robinson (03:21):

Yeah. It's got to be something people want to embrace in the first place. We're seeing people just try to force people to do things and that doesn't work. They've got to want to do it. And the other thing we've noticed with the risk management standard is people just push the risk management standard approach. And remember, we sort of hammered this point before, the point is that all reasonable practical precautions - ALL - so you've got to go through all the different ways ideas can be found. I mean, the legislation, for example, tries to do the generative thing saying, you must talk to people, you must consult widely. But that doesn't mean to say you can't have technical process where you've got technical experts looking at the core issues and things like that. And indeed, senior management should know about some of these things and should think about these things. Our frustration with senior execs not knowing the hazards, I mean, I shouldn't pick on lawyers, but I do remember meeting a lawyer of a very large underground mining company back in the 2000s; he'd never been underground, he'd never seen the dangers and the risks that the people who generated the wealth that were supporting them were actually involved in. And I never quite understood that. I mean, we have the same thing with marine pilots. You've got marine pilot boards who've never been out on a pilotage to see what the marine pilot's actually doing.

Gaye Francis (04:28):

And I think that's one of the key things, isn't it? They should know about those things and if you're a member of the board, you have a responsibility to inform yourself to do that and make sure you're getting the right information from your senior executive to make sure you can make informed decisions.

(04:45):

But just going back to the tools and techniques, and I think that's one of the ways that R2A is different and we often come unstuck when a client comes to us and asks for something that this is the way we want things done. And even though it doesn't quite make sense to us. So there's a whole lot of different tools and techniques. As you said, there's generative techniques; there's the technical hazops, and fmeas; there's threatened vulnerability studies. And I always say at the end of Richard's courses, which we do through Engineering Education Australia, is be aware there's a whole lot of tools and techniques out there. They will all provide insight for you.

Richard Robinson (05:20):

And none of them are wrong.

Gaye Francis (05:21):

None of them are wrong, but they do provide different insight. You need to be aware of the pros and cons and you got to pick the tool that works best to solve the problem. And I think some organisations are getting unstuck or becoming unstuck because they have a process that you do for risk management.

Richard Robinson (05:39):

Often the risk management standard.

Gaye Francis (05:41):

Which is the way to do all risk management tasks and it's not providing the value for money, it's not providing the insight that they need to make their organisation safe.

Richard Robinson (05:52):

It's worse than that. They're spinning the wheels at great costs than expense to the organisation. And what's probably worse is that the really competent people who are actually trying to think this stuff through it causes a blockage and stops those competent people from actually making substantive and useful change.

Gaye Francis (06:07):

So yeah, I think some of those processes have stopped people thinking, haven't they?

Richard Robinson (06:12):

Yep. I mean, one of the things people ask me at different times, what makes a competent risk person and the answer I usually give them is very Rudyard Kipling answer: insatiable curiosity. Again, Gaye always looked at me strange when I say that because that's from my point of view, it's one of your underlying characteristics. It's the kind of person... They're doing something, and we've hired lots of engineers over time, so you and I have watched different engineers doing things in different ways, for example, and some of them get so focused inside the thing that they don't sort of become aware of what's happening around them. Whereas the one that looks up and sees other things happening and wonders, well, I'm doing this, sure, but that's happening over there and that's not quite consistent with what's going over there. Should I have a way of aligning this? And that's what I mean by a satiable curiosity. It's that nosiness. After watching your program of life, I've got a funny feeling that may be genetic as your daughters have the similar traits, but that curiosity is something, and not all people have it. I haven't quite understood this one. It's almost like a childlike nosiness.

Gaye Francis (07:19):

It's an ability to question, isn't it? And not being afraid potentially of the consequences that come that way, speaking up, but also being aware of the bigger picture.

Richard Robinson (07:30):

But an organisation that can let people like that prosper is a complex organisation.

Gaye Francis (07:35):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (07:36):

And I think that's where one of the things that our society is doing and this formalisation of risk management, particularly with the WHS legislation and the ISO 31000, I'm not sure in many ways it's actually doing, it's achieving the success people think it should. I mean, we spent a fair part of our life overturning Australian Standards because the difficulty we've got is that it's not an Australian Standard that's right. The standard isn't recognised good practice. It's the worthwhile ideas contained in the Standard. And very often there's a lot of good ideas and a lot of Standards, but not all the ideas and all standards are worthwhile.

Gaye Francis (08:12):

But you have to think with that. And I think a couple of courses that we've done recently with some transport organisations is you have to solve it from first principles first, come up with the best solution and then you go and check against the Standard. Whereas some of the engineers were saying, oh, but we just designed to the Standard. And the chief engineer was sort of saying, no, no, no, no. What are we trying to solve? What is the best solution that we can get.

Richard Robinson (08:37):

In order to achieve the outcomes that we want? And then we check back against the Standard. That's that quote I always give from that 1939 Chairman of Victoria Division of Engineers Australia: "Standards have two purposes to prevent fools from their folly and rogues from their roguery". Because you're meant to work at from first principles how it's supposed to be, and then you test back against the Standard, make sure you haven't stuffed something up. And likewise, if somebody, a contractor's done the work and it's wrong, the simplest way to hang the poor sod is to generally say you haven't complied with the Standard, you're toast. But I've seldom found a Standard that applies in all circumstances, in all ways. That's not the case, not a technical standard.

Gaye Francis (09:14):

And they're also lagging indicators as well. They're often five and 10 years old. And technology is improving at pace at the moment. And what was reasonable, what may not have been reasonable five years ago certainly should be considered again now. And with the technology that's available and the ideas that are available.

Richard Robinson (09:37):

Well, that's like underground mining in the shipping business where you're watching the changes. I mean, the first time I went underground, which was a long time ago now, but people are still talking nostalgically about air leak miners. That's where some guys have got a jackhammer basically supported on the leg hammering away, and they dug the rock out and then they put the chargers in, they lit it themselves, and then they came back and mucked it out themselves and did the whole thing by themselves. These were all lean people. There was never a plump air leak miner that I've ever seen. When I turned up, pretty much that was all gone and people were driving vehicles underground with giant machines doing various things.

Gaye Francis (10:18):

And now it's all remote control from above the surface.

Richard Robinson (10:22):

They're on Perth airport, just drive it remotely.

Gaye Francis (10:24):

Which is quite incredible.

Richard Robinson (10:26):

And that happened in about 30 years ago, I think.

Gaye Francis (10:28):

Yeah, it doesn't take long at all. I think one of the other things that is potentially happening is that the corporate memory is failing safety. So by having these really structured processes, it's stopping people talking within the organisation across different departments and projects across an organisation of all the studies that have been done. Some of the work and the questions that we've been asked recently; Richard and I've been in business for 25 years or a bit more together is: "Oh, we didn't know you did that study for us". And they've been done for different parts of the organisation and it's really a technique or a methodology that would help solve the current problem that they're coming to talk to us about and they don't know. So it's really interesting that the corporate memory in safety doesn't seem to be being shared and propagated throughout the organisation.

Richard Robinson (11:25):

Well, it's certainly more than that because R2A's modus operandi has always been: We'll train you to get it done and then you keep doing it. And that obviously works for a while until that person or people or that team moves on. So it's probably about a five year cycle the way it's going, because people don't seem to be lasting. It is not a career in the way in which things used to be these days.

Gaye Francis (11:48):

No. People are moving on from jobs and the turnover's quite high - two to five years.

Richard Robinson (11:53):

Correct. In fact, we still keep coming across people. Now, remember we did some lecturing at different universities at different times and 10 years later there's guys just looking at us going, ah, I remember you.

Gaye Francis (12:06):

So yes, we are the exception, Richard, we're still working together after that long.

Richard Robinson (12:11):

It's curious. Anyway.

Gaye Francis (12:13):

So all of these things is sort of making safety and the subject of risk management, I guess, in organisations, the management of safety, more complex and harder.

Richard Robinson (12:27):

Well, the one that I've noticed particularly is this Monte Carlo simulation for project risk. And people are signing off on that. And yet our experience has been, and you just commented at the recent risk conference you went to, you gave a paper at, what, eight weeks ago now or something? Not long ago. The ones that bite you is the big rare ones that you didn't think about. And that wasn't in your probability distribution. And that's why the big projects are failing.

Gaye Francis (12:50):

People aren't using a whole lot of techniques.

Richard Robinson (12:53):

We're not saying don't do Monte Carlos, by the way, because that'll tell you the most likely projects outcome, which is well worth knowing.

Gaye Francis (12:59):

But I think you need to do more than one. I think what we're finding now is one risk technique is not sufficient to find all of the risk issues just because they're such a merit of them.

Richard Robinson (13:12):

And hazops, for example, is not the only way to do it in the chemical industry. It never has been.

Gaye Francis (13:19):

So what we would suggest to you is, I guess that there's a whole lot of tools and techniques out there. They provide different insight into different risk issues. But if your organisation's doing only a single or using a single process and technique, then you're probably missing, particularly, the rare critical items.

Richard Robinson (13:41):

And when you're trying to address all issues of concern and demonstrate that all reasonable practicable precautions in place, you need to think generally more widely than most people we see are currently doing.

Gaye Francis (13:56):

I think we might leave it there. We could talk about this topic for quite a while and we might go into some depth on some of these topics a little bit further.

Richard Robinson (14:04):

It's not exactly a chat on Chatham Rules thing too. We might say something we shouldn't say.

Gaye Francis (14:10):

We do have that issue sometimes. So thanks for joining us again. Hope you found this episode interesting and we hope you can join us next time.

Richard Robinson (14:18):

Thanks, Gaye. Bye.

Safety Integrity Levels (SIL) Allocation and its implications under WHS Legislation

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 2, Episode 6

In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss Safety Integrity Level (SIL) allocation and its implications under WHS legislation. 

They discuss their long history of working with IEC /AS 61508 and that their biggest caution is around Part 5 because it uses target levels of risk and safety as the basis for the SIL allocations. 

They share that they’ve seen SIL ratings work really well and, at other times, where there's been a misunderstanding of what SIL is. They explain the importance of getting the context right, put your hazard in, identify what your critical hazard is, and then look at all the controls that can be put in place. And often they're the civil design sort of things and mechanical designs before you even go to the electronic systems.

Read the full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Welcome to another episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis talk about Safety Integrity Levels (SIL) allocation. This was actually a suggestion from Ben on YouTube, so we thank him for the idea.

If you enjoy the episode, please give us a rating and help us spread the word and also subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. Enjoy and just like Ben, if you've got any feedback, please drop us a line.

Gaye Francis (00:37):

Hi Richard, welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:40):

Hello, pre-holiday Gaye. How are you?

Gaye Francis (00:41):

I know, I know. It's coming around fast.

Gaye Francis (00:45):

Today we're going to talk about, its actually a request for a podcast topic, which is very exciting. So we're going to talk about Safety Integrity Level Allocation, so SIL Allocation, and the implications of that, especially under the WHS legislation (OHS Act). So as always, Richard, hit us hard first and then I'll chip in as we go!

Richard Robinson (01:06):

Excellent Gaye!

Richard Robinson (01:08):

Well there's a whole chapter in our larger textbook (Engineering Due Diligence) about this because this is something that's been a frustration for us for a long time. I don't know if anyone's aware, but R2A was the functional safety assessor under IEC 61508 when it was a drafted in the late 1990s, I guess. And in fact, I think that was your first job (Gaye) when you signed up because we were literally doing the functional safety assessment for how two trains would get past each other on single line track in New South Wales. And that was your job; to test that their allocation and the way in which the watchdog, in particular, was going to work and would deal with every crossing, turnout and every other aspect of the system. So that started life as TOCS - -Train Order Control system -- and turned into TMACS -- Train Management and Control System. And I think our certification stopped about 2015.

Gaye Francis (02:03):

Yeah, it was about 15 years (ago). I think.

Richard Robinson (02:04):

It was only meant to be 10 years, as I recall. And they kept asking us to extend it. Obviously we were slightly anxious about this because if there ever had been a railway collision in that time, I doubt that we'd still be in business.

Gaye Francis (02:19):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (02:20):

Anyway, so at the time my signature was on the train control room at Orange, which I gather has now moved somewhere else, together with my then business partner, Kevin Anderson.

Richard Robinson (02:29):

Now this means we sort of spent a lot of time on this 61508 and it didn't become formalized I think until about 2001/2002, and they're now up to the second edition, which is 2010. Although because when Australia adopts it about a year later it turns into IEC 61508 or AS 61508 2011, which is incredibly frustrating.

Richard Robinson (02:52):

Anyway, I think it's, from memory in seven parts. Part 0 I think has been a more recent thing. The first four parts relate to a general functional safety assessment standard, which is used for the 61511. The functional safety assessment standard for control systems 62065, I think it is, for safety systems and I can't remember what the nuclear one is, but since that's going to be one of our next podcasts, you might recall that.

Gaye Francis (03:16):

I'll make a note.

Richard Robinson (03:18):

Excellent!

Richard Robinson (03:19):

Now the bit that's caused us the greatest grief in which the chapter is all about is basically the SIL Allocation because it uses target levels of risk and safety as the basis for the SIL allocations. So what it asks you to do, and this is in Part 5, what it asks you to do is a hazard risk analysis, work out what the current risk levels are. Then you have to work out what your tolerable or target risk levels are. Then you look at what the different control aspects are, like the existing external ??? think they call them, they change their name between the additions, which external risk reduction facility. And then whatever's left that becomes your SIL allocation. So if you need another two orders of magnitude risk reduction, well then arguably that would be a SIL 2 depending on whether it's continuous or low demand and all that sort of thing.

Richard Robinson (04:07):

Now so far as we're concerned, and that's where the crunch comes, using target levels of risk and safety, which was what the previous ALARP discussion was all about, is absolutely verboten under the provisions of the WHS legislation. And that's why we've always felt that 61508 was a particular problem.

Richard Robinson (04:27):

Now I think it's worth just commenting. I remember looking up the websites internationally a while back just confirming about 61508 and I remember reading a website, which I thought was particularly helpful, where it made the point that it's not a standard that's recognised good practice, it's the worthwhile ideas in the standard. So saying that the cell allocation is an error in 61508, which is one section of one part of seven parts, doesn't mean that the whole thing's futile or anything like that. I mean if you have to go through the process of actually realising the SIL level that you've actually selected, then so far as we know the standard works particularly well. But the problem is the initial SIL allocation, which as we've demonstrated in all the studies we've done, is usually where the greatest cost occurs in the sense that it commits you to a huge cost. I mean basically, as far as we're aware, going from SIL 1 to SIL 2 to SIL 3 to SIL 4, pretty much it means an order of magnitude increase for every SIL number that you go up by.

Gaye Francis (05:33):

In cost. That is.

Gaye Francis (05:36):

But we've also seen it being used in a number of other ways and I think this is where people get confused about it, isn't it? We've often seen it used to allocate a reliability target for a system and we've also seen it being used in isolation and allocating SIL levels to the electronic components without taking into account all of the other controls that are in the system to begin with. So they're often elevated SIL ratings than may necessarily be required.

Richard Robinson (06:07):

Well, the WHS legislation is particularly clear. You've got to eliminate if you can, and that's an absolute categorical imperative. And then if you can't eliminate, then you reduce. And it's weird because you find this remark and I sort of dug it out again, it's about halfway into the first part one and it says something to the effect that, well, no, not within the scope of this standard. It is a primary importance that the determined hazards of the equipment under control are eliminated at source, for example, by the application of inherent safety principles and the application of good engineering practice. But that's just a note like a footnote. It's not saying, you start with saying, can we eliminate this thing? And you might recall the Gateway bridge example in Queensland. We got called in to do a SIL study on an anemometer, an electronic variable message system for the top of the Gateway bridge, which is up in the air. So you can get high winds up there and high sighted vehicles, vans and so forth can get knocked around by wind at that elevation if you're not expecting it. And so they wanted to provide people with...

Gaye Francis (07:14):

Information of what the...

Richard Robinson (07:16):

About wind speeds. The problem was of course, if that information is an error, ie too high or too low or not there at all and people are relying on it, that could then cause...

Gaye Francis (07:24):

An incident or an accident. And they were wondering what SIL level that this needed to be.

Richard Robinson (07:30):

That's Right. And this is where the IT people sort of encouraged this process, as I recall.

Gaye Francis (07:33):

They do.

Richard Robinson (07:34):

Now this... Perhaps you should take over here.

Gaye Francis (07:38):

So we sort of spent the morning workshopping this and arguing for about a morning and then we didn't really come to any landing on it at lunchtime. And then somebody asked, well you've got the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne, what do you use in Melbourne? I said, there's flags on the top of it. So we don't have an electronic system saying what the wind speeds are in Melbourne, but you can tell by the direction of the flags which way the wind's going, whether it's a strong wind, whether it's not a strong wind -- a visual indication. So we came back after lunch and we sort of landed on the control of putting a wind sock on the Gateway bridge that if it was missing, it didn't give incorrect information. It couldn't give incorrect information. And if it was missing then the wrong information wasn't given to the drivers. So I think that's what they ended up landing on, wasn't it? And the electronic system was ditched altogether.

Richard Robinson (08:42):

Yeah, that's right. And so basically just put up a standard wind sock. You see it at an airfield with a light on it so you can see it at night and if it's obviously blowing in one direction and it's rock hard and sitting out to one side, it's blowing a gale in that direction. And that's what was done. And all the SIL status we've done with rare exception, we've downgraded the SIL rating by at least the order of magnitude very often by two.

Gaye Francis (09:07):

Yes. Or no SIL rating at all.

Richard Robinson (09:09):

Because it just didn't make sense. And the only way to do that, and particularly we do it within the context of the WHS legislation. Now you might remember that other study we did in Queensland where the tunnel, the jet fans, in order to sort of manage a fire in the tunnels and it had been given a SIL rating and the contractor, because it had to work for the OMCS and I can't remember what OMCS stands for, but it's an operating management system for the tunnel. The OMCS ran the ventilation system and the idea was, I think it was size that if you turn the jet fans on, you could actually manage a 50 megawatt fire from memory. Design was for a, I think was for a heavy commercial vehicle type fire.

Richard Robinson (09:56):

We turned up to do this review and it was kind of strange actually because first of all, they'd obviously called it up as a reliability standard as I recall, but they'd completely ignored the fire supression system which is an utterly independent system. And so when you looked at both these systems together combined, there was a SIL rating in effect on the fire system which could already be incorporated. And therefore from our point of view, the OMC system didn't actually need accelerating at all. But what was particularly entertaining, if we recall, this was just before the WHS Act commenced in Brisbane on the 1st of January, 2012. So we were working this in November/December, 2021.

Gaye Francis (10:37):

2011.

Richard Robinson (10:38):

2011, yeah, that's right. And I remember distinctly saying, guys, if we sign off under the old tolerable risk basis of things and we sign off, there's a clause in the legislation that says anything that's signed off beforehand doesn't have to be done under the new one as long as you've sort of got it underway. But if you fail to sign off it before Christmas this year and the legislation commences on the 1st of January, we'll all be back here again in the new year doing it again. And all the technical people laughed at us. Remember? <Yes.> They said, oh, you're kidding. And that was before the lawyer turned up and told them all to come back.

Gaye Francis (11:10):

Yes, we were back in the February of 2012, weren't we?

Richard Robinson (11:14):

Yeah we were.

Gaye Francis (11:15):

But again, because they hadn't sort of had the context right of the two systems operating independently, they had over allocated a SIL level to the OMCS as you said, but they didn't take into account the other system.

Richard Robinson (11:32):

Well, a fire system's normally a low demand system, that means it acts less than once per year and it normally has about a SIL 2 low demand rating. Now the ventilator system with regards to fire would have sort of the same frequency, low demand. And so if you add two systems together, you're sort of up to SIL 4, which obviously doesn't make any sense at all for something like that. So anyway, I can't actually recall what did we do there. I think we said it didn't need a SIL rating and I think we worked out, we actually did the numbers to work out what the reliability was and the reliability was considered so high. So whilst it wasn't formally SIL rated t was sort of seen to be adequately reliable as I recall.

Gaye Francis (12:13):

That's my recollection of it as well, that when we actually dug deeper into it, it was more a reliability target for operations rather than a SIL rating per se. Just before, I guess we move on from the SIL ratings. I know that you've said we really don't know how they got the numbers.

Richard Robinson (12:31):

No, what the 10 to the minus 1, 2, 3, 4 low demand then 5, 6, 7, 8 for high demand.

Gaye Francis (12:38):

They just seem to roll over from each other. So we've never been able to ascertain where those numbers were derived from or how they came about.

Richard Robinson (12:47):

No, I've asked at a number of conferences I've been to on SIL studies and things like that and given papers and I've always asked people and it's just one of those things. I mean I don't think we have a philosophical problem with orders of magnitude. I think we've always found it to be quite useful.

Gaye Francis (12:59):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (13:00):

But I've never seen any sort of scientific basis, as it were, for that understanding.

Gaye Francis (13:06):

Yes. Now we have seen SIL levels work well in other cases and we did do a bypass again in Queensland and it was a very narrow bypass that if a wider vehicle, wider truck was going along the bypass, it was one vehicle at a time, they needed traffic signals at either end to stop the traffic. And that was a blind spot. So they did end up SIL rating that, but it didn't have a super high SIL rating.

Richard Robinson (13:34):

That's correct.

Gaye Francis (13:35):

But it was a combination of safety integrity levels as well as a reliability target that these things worked when they were required. So we've seen SIL ratings work really well. We've seen other times where there's been a misunderstanding of what SIL is and they've been more aimed at reliability targets. So I guess with SIL it's one of those things that you have to have an understanding of what you're trying to achieve. Always look at it in the context of all the other controls that you've got in place when you're trying to solve the hazard that you're doing, not just looking at the electronic component of it.

Richard Robinson (14:11):

Well that was the other one, the tunnel under the freeway, remember under the airport

Gaye Francis (14:18):

The Tugan bypass at the Gold Coast airport.

Richard Robinson (14:21):

They wanted to accelerate the VMS system for that you might recall. And again, it was IT people working in isolation because they failed to reflect on the fact that these civil engineers had gone to a lot of trouble to design the tunnel, so as you came around the corner, you've got a clear view from one side of the tunnel to the other. And from a very practical viewpoint, if there's a fireball erupts in the tunnel, do you believe what you see through the windscreen or do you believe the variable message on the side of the road? And the answer is you look through the windscreen and respond to that. So if there's a fireball on the tunnel that you can see, don't go in the tunnel. You don't need a variable message sign to be a high reliability saying don't go there.

Gaye Francis (15:02):

And I think that's what it is. A lot of the time the SIL reviews have been done out of context.

Richard Robinson (15:07):

I think that's correct.

Gaye Francis (15:08):

So that would be probably our takeaway from this SIL podcast is make sure you've got the context right...

Richard Robinson (15:15):

Because that will normally reduce the SIL level and save you generally an order of magnitude of cost.

Gaye Francis (15:20):

Reduce the SIL level or eliminate the requirement for a SIL level sometimes, many times actually. So get the context right, put your hazard in, identify what your critical hazard is, and then look at all the controls that can be put in place. And often they're the civil design sort of things and mechanical designs before you even go to the electronic systems.

Richard Robinson (15:42):

And don't do the target level of risk approach described in 61508 Section 5 because so far as we know, you'll be setting yourself up for some kind of potential criminal charge under the WHS legislation, the way the world has currently gone.

Gaye Francis (15:58):

Alright. So I hope you found that interesting and as we said, again, if anyone's got any topics they'd like to shoot us, we're happy to talk about those as well. So thank you Richard.

Richard Robinson (16:07):

Pleasure Gaye.

Gaye Francis (16:10):

See you next time.

Richard Robinson (16:11):

Indeed.

The Journey to WHS Criminalisation: How the Risk Management profession has changed over the last 40 years

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 2, Episode 5

In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss the journey to WHS (Work Health and Safety) criminalisation and the evolution of the risk management profession over the past few decades.  

Richard discusses his working history and experience watching the application of risk management change from the 1980s to 2010s from engineers to psychologists and culture, to the lawyers.

They highlight the increase in prosecutions in the last 18 months under WHS legislation, particularly targeting small and medium-sized organisations, and recent cases, such as the Dreamworld incident and the White Island explosion, with the introduction of criminal manslaughter provisions. 

Overall, Richard and Gaye emphasise the importance of considering all reasonable practical precautions to ensure safety in organisations, rather than solely relying on compliance audits. 

Read the full episode transcript below.

Episode Transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Hi, welcome to the latest episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis talk about the journey to WHS criminalisation and more specifically, the journey of the risk management profession over the past few decades.

(00:25):

We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also, remember to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, and if you have any feedback, please drop us a line. Enjoy the episode.

Gaye Francis (00:40):

Hi Richard, and welcome to another podcast session. How are you today?

Richard Robinson (00:44):

I'm well, Gaye. It's a very fine day. Pleasant temperature.

Gaye Francis (00:48):

Today we thought we'd talk about the journey to WHS criminalisation and the journey, I guess the risk management standards been on and, or, the risk management profession has been on in the last 30 years. And I guess this came out of, I gave a conference paper late last year, I think it was, and I was the only engineer amongst a whole lot of lawyers. And so we were sort of saying, how do you demonstrate due diligence in accordance with the WHS legislation? But there was a lot of lawyers talking about how to comply with the legislation. And it was interesting that the two different aspects of what the lawyers were saying as in a compliance check against the legislation compared to what we were saying, to keep things safe in your organisation -- this is the due diligence process that you need to go through. And one of the speakers was talking about that, and an observation from us is that there's been a lot more prosecutions under the WHS legislation, probably in the last 18 months to two years.

Richard Robinson (01:55):

Correct

Gaye Francis (01:55):

And that observation was quite confronting that we didn't expect that to happen because it hadn't happened in the past. And the observation was that they were mainly prosecuting small and medium sized organizations rather than large businesses.

Richard Robinson (02:10):

Well they were the successful prosecutions, at any rate.

Gaye Francis (02:13):

That's correct. And one of the lawyers was saying that there was still an observation that there was still quite a number of levels between the executive management in large organisations and what was happening on the ground or its site between those large organisations. So there was still a corporate veil protecting some of the larger organisations against the WHS criminal manslaughter...

Richard Robinson (02:42):

Criminal manslaughter.

Gaye Francis (02:42):

Criminal manslaughter provisions. But I think that's starting to change even in the last little while. That excuse that there is that power distance is no longer an excuse or a reason they won't be prosecuted against.

Richard Robinson (02:58):

Well, I mean, see from an engineering viewpoint, we've always had held the view, the objective is to stop things going wrong in the first place rather than just to stop yourself going to jail. We agree that's a worthwhile thing to do, but the objective is to prove, demonstrate to you're safe first in a way that satisfies your legal obligations, which has always been our proposition. Whereas the lawyers just sort of say, a lot of 'em say, let's just go and do a compliance audit.

Gaye Francis (03:21):

So it's a liability management exercise rather than an improved safety exercise.

Richard Robinson (03:26):

Correct. What was that line that somebody gave us? Remember they gave us a new acronym? I can't remember what it was now in LinkedIn channel, I think it was. Anyway.

(03:38):

Well, one of the consequences of all this that we're talking about, we're trying to reflect on the actual history of this whole risk management business and how we actually got to this thing. And one of the slides in our book I originally pitched from KPMG, basically from the 1990s I think it was, but they had sort of had an observation in the 1980s, in effect, the technologists, the engineers particularly hopped into this risk management business with enthusiasm. That's basically when I showed up. I mean, I was just commenting that one of the first papers I ever gave was "The rise, the future of risk engineering" with Derek Viner back in 1983. And the engineers had seized on this with great enthusiasm. I remember <inaudible> of advanced engineering from Sydney Uni was big on it too. I dunno if you remember then. No, you wouldn't actually.

Gaye Francis (04:17):

No, it's before my time, Richard. I can say.

Richard Robinson (04:20):

Anyway, the engineers were big on this in the 80s and in fact, that's how I got into it and how I sort of got into the business in the first place. And the risk management standards started in that time, which was based on the insurance downside risk management. But then the commercial people turned up in the 90s and said "No, no, no. Well, you technological people. Technological risk is a subset of business commercial risk. And we believe an upside downside risk, not just managing downside. We talk about optimising upside as well. And so all your technological people, you're a subset of business risk" which is what the message KPMG was basically promoting.

Gaye Francis (05:00):

So you could have rewards and you could have opportunities as well as downside risk.

Richard Robinson (05:05):

They're still talking about it now. If you manage your own super fund, they still talk about risks and opportunities, all these financial people.

(05:12):

Anyway, what then happened, which have kind of amused me, was that the psychologists then turned up in the 2000s, said "No, no, no, all you commercial people, this is all a matter of risk culture". I know the APRA review of the National Australia Bank foreign currency trading scandals said that the risk management standards were seen as 'trip wires to be avoided rather than genuine attempts at risk control' and all that sort of thing. And so the aviation psychologist particularly appeared and said "No, no, no". And a number of the regulators turned into aviation. Aviation psychologists became the regulator, different industries. And it was the psychologists.

(05:46):

And then that's what sort of happened next was that it's almost as though the lawyers felt 'we're missing out on this, we've got to get back into this', or something like that, because obviously the 2004 OHS Act came into Victoria, but the WHS legislation commences at the start of the 2010s and number of jurisdictions actually put criminality in for recklessness, knew or made or let it happen. That means you had to be a known problem, which for some reason you failed to manage. And Queensland put that in and a number of others. Anyway, that decade sort of moseyed on and then, particularly, we had the Dreamworld incident where the raft flips and the four young people got killed. And when they tried to prosecute in Queensland the managing director and the chairman, it seems that they didn't know anything about it, the issue. Even though the organisation knew. And so they could have done something about it.

Gaye Francis (06:40):

In the background was that the rafts had actually flipped during a maintenance cycle when they were empty, so they knew when the water levels were low that these rafts could flip. So as an organisation, as you said, they did know about it. But did the chairman and the managing director know?

Richard Robinson (06:57):

Clearly the organisation was negligent and they wanted to press that negligence onto the senior decision makers and they couldn't do it because recklessness said you'd have to have shown that they knew beyond reasonable doubt that the hazard existed. And I doubt that they did. And so the Boland review kicked in and they basically chucked in criminal manslaughter, knew or ought to have known, which has been busily flying around the place since about 2018. And Victoria, for example, adopted in 2020. So you can see in that sense that there's been a sudden rise in

Gaye Francis (07:26):

Prosecutions and

Richard Robinson (07:28):

Well, the legislative framework's been put in place to facilitate it. So what competent regulator wouldn't say: Well, they've gone and given us all the tools, doesn't that mean we're supposed to? And it just sort of roll onto the White Island explosion where they started us by prosecuting 13 parties. You were telling me that (latest information) had popped out somewhere.

Gaye Francis (07:48):

Yeah. They've dropped the charges against the three individuals, but the organisation has been found guilty as a management organisation and sentencing's now not due till sort of early next year, 2024.

Richard Robinson (08:00):

But if you look at the journey like that, you're going from the technologists to the commercial people to this aviation psychologists and culture to the lawyers, sort of reinserting, criminal manslaughter in there. And you sort of wonder why in the 2020s that there's a sudden burst of prosecutions... Probably seems like a reasonable possibility view if you just look at that from a helicopter view of the secrets of events.

Gaye Francis (08:22):

I think we've always had a problem though, Richard, when you set back to it and you say: Hold on, we're trying to make our organisations safer and the tasks that we do safer for the individuals that do it. By breaking 'em up into all of those little silos again, you've got this different insight and I don't know that risk should be separated out as a separate function. It's almost should be business as usual and thought about in all of those different ways. And I do get that they give you different insights. But if you take, and we use the word SFAIRP, and I think we're moving away from using the word SFAIRP because that is creating a language confusion again. Whereas the intent is to make sure that all reasonable practical precautions are in place.

Richard Robinson (09:07):

With the emphasis on ALL. I think that's where some of the lawyers are getting a bit confused out there. You have to demonstrate that all reasonable practical precautions place is not just a matter of reasonable practicability, it's all of them. And if you adopt a process which can miss one that was reasonable and that could have worked and it's identified after the event, that's problematic.

(09:32):

That's the other point I wanted to make goodness just escape me again, which is irritating. But anyway, that's what happens when you get a bit older.

Gaye Francis (09:39):

So I think none of these things are wrong. There is a different focus and there's definitely a liability management exercise; a lot of liability management exercises going on at the moment. But as we said, to make your organisation safe, you've got to consider all of the reasonable practicable precautions that can be put in place. And that requires a whole lot of different processes, not just a compliance audit against the legislation.

Richard Robinson (10:06):

I suppose what I think has puzzled me a bit is that I remember, I think we made this observation before, when we were doing some work for what was in the Office of Gas Safety. We sort of worked out there's two types of regulators, those who think that the number of successful prosecutions are a measure of success. And those who think that the number of successful prosecutions are measure of their failure. We've noticed abrupt decline in the number of who think the successful prosecution are measure their failure. And I'm not quite sure whether that's because they basically said: Tried to do it, that's all too hard and prosecuting is just so much simpler. And it is easier at one level. You just sort of have a few prosecutions say, well, if you don't do it...

Gaye Francis (10:40):

It's black and white isn't it. Whereas you're not trying to help. I think another observation we're trying to, we have seen is, when the legislation first came out was, we thought there may be a lot more technical directors put on Boards who had an understanding of the organisations and the issues that they were exposed to. But that certainly doesn't appear to have been the case. There still seem to be mainly lawyers and accountants on there. And I wonder whether this new view or new move towards, or a recent move towards the liability management tool, that's where the lawyers come into being on Boards. But they still have to have an understanding now that it's knew or ought to have known. They still are required to have an understanding of what the issues that their organisation are exposed to.

Richard Robinson (11:31):

Well, I would've thought so, but we'll see what happens.

Gaye Francis (11:36):

So thank you for joining us today. It's a short and sweet one today, but we just thought that that was an interesting observation, the journey that the risk management subject I guess has gone through in the last 30, 40 years or so. And it'll be interesting to see where it goes next.

(11:55):

Thank you. Have a great day.

Richard Robinson (11:57):

Thanks, Gaye. Bye.

Safety Culture Change Agents | The role of engineers in change & safety

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 2, Episode 4

In this episode Richard and Gaye discuss their work as change agents for safety culture. They reflect on feedback after a recent presentation at the Australasian Marine Pilots Institute (AMPI) Conference, and how they reflected their importance in reminding industry of how to review safety.

They discuss that engineering is about driving change to improve safety, and that's what they at R2A do. Engineers are not supposed to do the same thing again and again and just focus on Standards. That you need to design for what you need to do and then you check against the standard to make sure you haven't missed anything. 

They also touch on Apto PPE, Gaye’s women’s and maternity PPE range (available online in our store).

Read full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis talk about their work in due diligence engineering and how they are change agents for safety culture. We hope you enjoy the episode. Please give us some feedback and if you have any topics you'd like us to talk about, please drop us a line. Also, make sure that you subscribe on your favourite podcast platform and that you give us a rating. Enjoy the episode.

Gaye Francis (00:40):

Hi Richard. Welcome back for another podcast episode.

Richard Robinson (00:44):

Good to be here Gaye. Always entertaining!

Gaye Francis (00:46):

Always entertaining, always have a bit of a laugh! Today we're going to talk about safety culture change agents. And I guess just a little bit of an introduction for our listeners is Richard recently gave a presentation at an AMPI conference, which is the Australasian Marine Pilots Institute Conference, in Perth and we've had a good relationship with AMPI for a number of years now, probably over 15 coming up 20 years. And after Richard's presentation, he said: "I feel like a broken record. I've said the same thing over and over for a number of years. Are we actually still adding value?" And he asked this question, only Richard can to a number of people that he met at the AMPI conference. And one of the interesting feedback, and he shared it with me when he came back, was that they saw R2A as change agents. So they were trying to get a change in safety culture within their, either, organisation or profession in the industry. And the way that Richard explains it, and R2A explains it, gave them that way to be able to do it. So it was really interesting because I said to him "Well, are they all new people that haven't heard you speak before? So it's still interesting. Or are they still on the journey?" And the feedback was that partly there are new people coming into the maritime industry...

Richard Robinson (02:11):

Well particularly the overseas ones because the overseas contingent we had Finnish, Norwegian, French, English, the marine pilotage American Canadian, the actual pilotage around the planet was all there. And the thing they kept saying, all the innovation, all the changes coming from Australia, we want be here. And then, I think I told you, I showed you that picture of all the (women). The new president's female and the president of AMPI's female and all the female marine pilots. There was a cluster, I think we put the picture in our recent blog or something, I forget what it was. But anyway, it was really quite impressive. That was really the best session (females in marine pilotage). I was hanging around listening to that one, thinking these are remarkable people. They really were.

Gaye Francis (02:53):

So that was sort of, yes, there were a whole lot of new people there. And the other feedback that there was is that not only are there new people coming into the maritime industry, but it's really easy to slip back to the old way of doing hazard based risk assessment. And so somebody basically said: "No, no, no, we need to keep you around to keep reminding us that there's a better way to do it." And safety culture requires...

Richard Robinson (03:17):

This is partly because the IMO process has got the quantified risk assessment using targeted levels of risk and safety, in other industries known as ALARP, sitting around causing endless grief. I remember that paper we did, the safety case for Sydney Ports with the Captain Philip Holiday who was the previous Harbour Master Southampton and the IMO process using total as risk and safety just killed him. That's one of the reasons I think he was in Australia. And when we did our process with him, I mean it was just a breeze. He was just so pleased. That's why he let us publish with him.

Gaye Francis (03:48):

And I think we talked about it before that it's really about, it's not about the level of risk, it's are all reasonable practicable precautions in place. And that's why the SFAIRP approach works so well for these high consequence, low likelihood events.

(04:03):

So we sort of came back and said, alright, so we are adding value to these sort of industries and they're the change agents. And as consultants we can come in and I guess some of the work that we've done more recently with local council in particular, they wanted to change the way that they were doing their safety assessments within their organisation.

Richard Robinson (04:25):

And presenting the safety. I mean they'd wound up in situations as Sydney Decker makes the point, he's that airline pilot turns professor of psychology at Queensland University, he just points out there's so many rules out there these days that nobody, not even the people doing their job knows what all the damn rules are, which is really kind of weird. And he's absolutely correct. And the paperwork, and again this council was complaining about it, the paperwork they were getting, the people who are doing the job, third parties were writing it for these people to do it. They didn't understand, well, I don't think the people writing it necessarily properly understood what they were writing. And certainly the people receiving it wasn't a position to implement it or effectively or usefully. It was just paperwork everywhere.

Gaye Francis (05:05):

So it was sort of becoming almost a liability management tool, wasn't it. A butt covering exercise that we have all of these processes and procedures and policies in place, but is it actually making it safer for the people on the ground doing the job? And even a comment in one of our recent Engineering Education Australia courses was that: "We feel like as people that are putting these things together, we've got to tell the people that are doing the job about every single little thing. And at best they're getting skimmed over. At worse they're not even being looked at all." And so are we sending these...

Richard Robinson (05:45):

The big bad ones. The rare ones. The big bad rare ones.

Gaye Francis (05:49):

So are we actually sending these people up almost for a fall? We're covering our own... the people that are writing these things are covering their butts, but they're not necessarily making it safe for the people that are doing the job.

Richard Robinson (06:03):

And we've done this a number of times. We've sort of looked at people's risk registers for a particular issue or hazard and the one that can kill and maim them is right down the bottom because it's considered to be so unlikely it's not worth thinking about. Whereas in fact, that's the one you've really got to make sure you've got right.

Gaye Francis (06:16):

So, we've said this on a number of occasions before, your risk register should really have tens of items in it, not hundreds of items. If you've got hundreds of items in your risk register, you've missed the plot.

Richard Robinson (06:28):

And you want to rank it by consequence in the first instance.

(06:32):

Now the point about this is because if you're looking at what R2A does, we just sort of recognised we're change agents in the sense that people get us in to actually change the system and have a different thing. And once we've done our bit, we leave and we tend to only come back if somebody feels things are slipping away again and they need to bring it back. I know, I think somebody described us once as 'hit-and-run' consultants, if I recall correctly. We turned up, did our thing and we didn't try to just keep doing it on their behalf. Because, again, the whole point of the WHS legislation, for example, it's a governance document. That's what we've always been told. And the whole point of this is business risk management is a line management function.

(07:10):

Anybody who thinks differently is kidding themselves. And the whole point of legislation was to put the responsibility to the highest level of decision makers, the people who have control ultimately and everybody else who doesn't have that control, to the extent that you have control, you've got to do what's reasonably practicable. That's a governance framework. And so we sort of find the situation where you've got third parties actually doing it for people; they can be advisors but they can't take responsibility. And somewhere in there, something hasn't been getting... those two things are somehow getting detached.

Gaye Francis (07:40):

So what you really have to do is... We go in and facilitate that change, I guess, for them, and then hand over the results that it's theirs to run with how they see fit and implement.

Richard Robinson (07:53):

This actually is one of these things because I mean just from my point of view of my experience working with Gaye, if she gets bored, life gets really bad. So she doesn't like keep doing the same thing all the time. <laughing>

(08:03):

Now, but that's actually the reason why Apto PPE exists. And I don't know we've spoken about this before, but Gaye and a number of other women in engineering a while back basically decided they were a bit sick of going to a construction site or work site and having to get in male PPE in order to do an inspection. I've got some pictures of Gaye in male PPE, which I've sent to her husband.

Gaye Francis (08:24):

Not really flattering images. But that's all right, we were married by that time. <laughs>

Richard Robinson (08:31):

Yes. Right!

Gaye Francis (08:31):

And you're right, that was one of the reasons that we started Apto PPE. I was a part of Women in Engineering and we did (women's PPE) from a safety perspective: Is it really safe for females to wear male fitting ill-fitting PPE onsite? And so Apto was sort of born from that and we did it from first principles. We designed them for a woman's figure and that they were safe on site. So yes, that's sort of our...

Richard Robinson (09:02):

Well, I didn't get much choice in this. These women were down the back (of office) doing their thing. But what I have observed in all this, if you're a bloke who works with women, it's better having the women cheerful than not. <laughter> And I recommend it that they wear clothes that they feel pretty good in.

Gaye Francis (09:17):

And that fit properly. So yeah, always happy to talk about Apto. But that's probably an introduction to another podcast at a later date. But just going with this change agent, we really have seen a change in safety culture and the way that it has to be dealt with.

Richard Robinson (09:35):

Well, I suppose the other thing is, I didn't want to drag Gaye off to a place she doesn't necessarily want to talk about, but I've mentioned in the past we had David Howarth out here, Professor from Cambridge Law and Public Policy, R2A sponsored him together with the Victorian bar and he had the book out "Law as Engineering". But the point he was making, which is the point I've always made, it's about change, engineering's about change. And that's what he's talking about in "Law as Engineering". He's talking about design exercise to change things and engineering's about change, and that's what we do. And the business that engineering just does the same thing again and again and again. And it's all about standards and standards and standards. We spend our life overstanding standards. People keep saying we're designed to the standards; no you don't. You design for what you need to do and then you check against the standard to make sure you haven't missed anything. And anybody who thinks to the contrary is kidding themselves. Engineering philosophy is about, it's all about the process. That's basically the position. The meanings and the method, results are only consequences. And that's why I suppose we've always had this that we're not going to keep doing the same thing Gaye, we can't bear it!

Gaye Francis (10:35):

We'd both annoy each other, I think, Richard. But that seems to be exactly what you said. You're supposed to design to first principles, first design for what you want to achieve and then you check against the standard. But we've had a number of discussions with some technological organisations that are building infrastructure and rolling stock, at the moment that, no, we just designed to the standard.

Richard Robinson (10:58):

Well, there's a bit of... Some of the Chief Engineers are refuting that profoundly and saying: No, you design for what we need and then you check back against the standard.

Gaye Francis (11:06):

But it was very, very clear that there were two groups of thought in that. And the one that you designed to what you need first was in the minority, but he was very strong.

Richard Robinson (11:17):

But you might notice that was a lot of Europeans. Remember I gave that paper to the tunneling conference about 2016 and I tried to test the difference between the different approaches. And it's really got to do with Inquisitorial versus the Adversarial legal system. The adversarial legal system hammers the point that it's not just enough to do what you think is a good idea. You're trying to test to see if you've overlooked anything at all times. And so far as I could tell, I thought that was the whole point of western critical philosophy, but maybe I'm missing something here.

Gaye Francis (11:46):

Alright, anything else? Last thoughts on safety culture change agents?

Richard Robinson (11:53):

That's what we (R2A) do. So if you want (your safety culture) to stay the same, don't hire us. If you want to be different, we'll help.

Gaye Francis (12:01):

We'll help facilitate the process.

Richard Robinson (12:04):

And also, just make the record, we're not interested in doing it for you. We're interested in getting you to do it for yourself.

Gaye Francis (12:12):

It has to be embedded in your organisation, that's right. And you have to be willing to make that change and notice that there is a change and the difference between the two.

Richard Robinson (12:21):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (12:22):

So we hope you found our podcast today interesting. And we hope you join us next time.

Project Due Diligence - Using a Military Intelligence Approach & Critical Success Outcomes

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 2, Episode 3

Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss project governance due diligence.and highlight their unique approach that has incorporated a military intelligence approach and the importance of focusing on critical success outcomes and vulnerabilities rather than threats. They also emphasise the need for early involvement of key stakeholders. They also discuss the airport rail link project in Victoria and the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, and touch on the limitations of Monte Carlo simulations in identifying high consequence, low likelihood events. 

Full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:03):

Welcome to the latest episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis talk about project governance due diligence. They discuss how they have applied a military approach to their work and also how they focus on critical success outcomes.

(00:26):

Enjoy the episode. Please give us a rating if you enjoy our work, and also ensure that you subscribe on your favorite platform.

Gaye Francis (00:36):

Hi Richard. Welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:38):

We're here again, Gaye.

Gaye Francis (00:40):

We are. Today we're going to talk about project due diligence, which is, I guess, close to our heart. And I attended a recent conference and presented a paper at Risk 2023, which was in Brisbane in September, 2023. And the theme of the conference was Risk Engineering for Resilient 2030. I think one of the key takeaways for me from the conference was that it was a really interesting conference and there were lots of papers given and everything. But there was a real focus, especially from the keynote speakers, around top-down criticality and vulnerability. And the people that were speaking as those keynotes were probably people that were putting projects together, so bigger projects. For example, the cladding replacement in Melbourne, that was one of the guys that spoke. But when you went and talked to people and the participants in the conference, one of the things that was still happening was those rare showstoppers were still bringing projects undone, those things that were critical and rare.

(01:51):

And my presentation was all around project governance and the little booklet that we've got out, "How to demonstrate due diligence - A practical guide for directors". And it really is that top down, focusing on the credible critical things, project showstoppers.

Richard Robinson (02:08):

High consequence, low likelihood.

Gaye Francis (02:11):

Yeah. And we've used this process for very many years on projects that have ranged from - am I going to get this right!? - $500 million to $2.5 billion?

Richard Robinson (02:27):

I think we started about $10 million up to $2.5- $3 billion.

Gaye Francis (02:30):

There you go.

Richard Robinson (02:30):

Australian dollars. I think Marina Coastal Expressway was about $2.5 billion US, as I recall.

(02:38):

And I guess if we just talk through today about what makes our process that little bit different from the traditional processes that we've seen, and we've said in many of our podcasts that there's a whole lot of tools and techniques out there, and they provide you with different insights into the risk issues that you do and some of the safety stuff that we - we've focused on safety in some of these podcasts - but the tools and techniques really do apply to projects as well, or can apply to projects as well.

(03:06):

Yep. Mostly.

Gaye Francis (03:10):

I guess, Richard, do you want to outline the process?

Richard Robinson (03:13):

Well, so far as we're concerned, it's really a military intelligence process, and it was originally developed to deal with people going on missions. So if you get it wrong, you're all going to die. So it's actually worth getting it right. What you don't do is take on a course of action where there's a credible critical showstopper that can come and bite you, even if it's rare, you just don't do it. We just adapted that.

(03:32):

Now, part of the reason why I adapted, I got it off Bob Browning who used to work with us. Unfortunately he is no longer with us. And he used to be the head of protected services for Asia. He said he got it off MI6 because he was working there for three years with the English for a while. And when he came back to Australia, I was working with him, he just explained how it works and what it was, and we just kind of adapted it.

(03:55):

But basically it sort of says, well, the simplest way to describe is to compare it to way most people do project risk management now. And that is what they do is they get people who have suffered pain in similar projects together in a room and they try to express their pain, usually by adapting a risk register from the previous nearest project they've been able to find. And you can normally tell that's the case because somebody has failed to do a global search in the spreadsheet and the name of the price project still buried in there. And then they all pour the pain they've previously suffered on this similar project and augment this risk register.

Gaye Francis (04:31):

So we're talking about hundreds of items in a risk register, which is just unmanageable.

Richard Robinson (04:36):

Yeah. And they do this usually around the tender stage. And as the project goes through, every now and then they drag this thing out and try to make sure they haven't overlooked something. And by the time they get to practical completion, they say, well, this is the end of the risk management process of practical completion. And then they hand it over to the poor sod who's got to live with the result who then has to spend a fair amount of time fixing all up and making sure that it really does achieve the outcomes that everybody intended.

(05:00):

The other way to do it, which is the way we've always done it, and this is what the military intelligence people do, is you actually walk forward in time to the end of the project when it's in and working and it's kicking all the goals you really want it to kick. We call them critical success outcomes. And you get the senior decision makers to explain what those essential critical successful outcomes are. And then having established what this happy place is when it's in and functioning, not just practical completion, it's actually achieving all the things it's supposed to do when it's actually working. This is a happy place, by the way. This is where promotions are possible. Excellence awards abound. And even bonuses can sometimes be represented. But this future happy place. And then you step backwards from that happy place and say, what are the threats to those outcomes? Those threats create vulnerabilities to those critical success outcomes. They are the vulnerabilities. And if you eliminate all those vulnerabilities, then these will be the high consequence, low likelihood ones as a rule, then you'll always wind up at this happy place on time, on budget, to spec, and it's clean and simple.

Gaye Francis (06:06):

I think you said a couple of important things there, and I just want to touch on those. And that was really about that you're focusing on the vulnerabilities. We've seen a lot of projects focus on threats that don't necessarily affect a critical success outcome.

Richard Robinson (06:21):

Correct. And that was one of Bob's special points (that) he kept hammering.

Gaye Francis (06:24):

So the key is to focus on the vulnerabilities rather than the threats per se, because if it doesn't affect one of your critical success outcomes, you don't want to spend resources and time on that particular threat. So you're focusing on the vulnerabilities and they are the ones, the threats that affect your critical success outcomes.

(06:43):

The second thing is about stakeholders and making sure the right stakeholders. Now we've seen large projects and there are a number of interested parties that are very vocal.

Richard Robinson (06:55):

And have opinions

Gaye Francis (06:56):

And have opinions that are often very loud, but they are not necessarily the key stakeholders for the project. So it's really important to make sure that you've identified the key stakeholders.

Richard Robinson (07:09):

And what you mean by that are those who live or die by the success or otherwise of this project.

Gaye Francis (07:14):

And I think sometimes that's the difficulty around this project governance and project due diligence stuff is that there's a number of stages in a project. And unless you can get all of the key stakeholders involved in the project very, very early on, then there's often a mismatch of what the critical success outcomes are for the project.

Richard Robinson (07:35):

It's like the tram project we did the, or Gaye did the project due diligence for the procurement of the Class E trams, the first trams for the Class E trams in Melbourne. And the real problem we had was getting Yara Trams on board as I recall.

Gaye Francis (07:51):

At the design stage.

Richard Robinson (07:52):

At the design stage because until you've actually chosen who the tender was and all that sort of stuff. But obviously the people who have to sign off with the safety cases is the tram operator, and that case, it's Yara Trams. So whilst there's a tendency for them not to be involved at the start, if they're the people who have to live with the final result and actually get the credited safety case up, if they're not involved in the initial design stages, you get something which is quite peculiar.

Gaye Francis (08:18):

So it's almost critical that they're involved. And when we've seen this with other projects as well, that you really do need to get the ultimate operators and maintainers on board very early on because it's a lot easier to make changes at a design phase or at a design stage than it is to be delivered with a piece of infrastructure or vehicle and then it has to be modified once it's had been built. A lot cheaper as well.

Richard Robinson (08:48):

Well also your project will blow out. If you're talking about a five-year project and you only discover at the end of year four that you've got a basic design flaw, you won't fix that. You are over time and over budget no matter what happens.

Gaye Francis (09:00):

And you are looking for work-arounds to deal with that particular issue.

Richard Robinson (09:03):

And we've seen that happen a fair bit. We shouldn't mention any rail projects, which we're familiar, for example.

Gaye Francis (09:09):

One of the interesting other things that I guess we've been, and there's been a couple of high profile projects in the news lately, and one of them is the airport rail link for Victoria out to Melbourne Airport and the project due diligence around that. And we understand that the federal government's just committed to providing half the funding for that particular project and for it to go ahead. And now there's some discussions with the airport around what that project looks like. Apparently they want all underground, and the offer on the table is above ground solution. But working towards that, you need all of the stakeholders involved. And look, don't get us wrong, we've worked on projects and they have gone relatively smoothly. But it doesn't mean that doing this process doesn't mean that issues won't arise. <Correct.> What it does typically mean is if you correctly identify your critical success outcomes in your threats and your key vulnerabilities, credible critical vulnerabilities, those project showstoppers, typically you don't get surprises.

Richard Robinson (10:19):

That's right. You know there's a problem and you know how hard it is and you can make a decision about it, but I don't think we've ever had a surprise with any major project we've dealt with.

Gaye Francis (10:27):

No. We've had to refine some controls before and tighten up those when they did manifest itself. And often that's in terms of quality assurance systems, but it's relatively straightforward. As Richard said: Make sure you got your key stakeholders in the room. Make sure critical success outcomes are clearly articulated. That's where we've also seen projects come undone, where the ultimate owner has been unable to clearly articulate what they're trying...

Richard Robinson (10:58):

You're better off not proceeding with the project if the ultimate owner can't articulate what it is they're actually trying to achieve.

Gaye Francis (11:04):

And trying to second guess that is just impossible. You setting yourself up for a fall.

(11:09):

The other question we've been asked is what are our thoughts around the Commonwealth Games in Victoria saying that they're not going to proceed with the Commonwealth Games? Our understanding was that there was some promised funding from the federal government and that was withdrawn.

Richard Robinson (11:24):

About half, I believe.

Gaye Francis (11:26):

So from a governance viewpoint, if half your funding gets withdrawn, you can't proceed with your project.

Richard Robinson (11:34):

You won't achieve your critical success outcomes. It's just one of those things. It's just simply don't have the resources to make it so.

Gaye Francis (11:40):

And we've seen a number of projects have to be withdrawn and not proceed because there are these potential showstoppers that can't be addressed.

Richard Robinson (11:48):

But the other point is just to make a remark about Monte Carlo simulations, because we see a lot of this and people keep saying, Monte Carlo simulations has solved all your problems. No. We're not against Monte Carlo simulation because it'll tell you the most likely outcomes and that's worth knowing, we're not any doubt about that at all. But what Monte Carlo simulation simply can't do is pick the high consequence low likelihood event, because generally a rare combination of circumstances has to get together. The way I normally explain it, if you've got three probability distributions, you've got to add up from Monte Carlo simulation, the only way to do that is to do a number of trials to get the final probability distribution, and you might only do 15 or 20,000 trials if you're lucky. What happens to the low likelihood long tails of each of those distributions? Well, the answer is they just go missing. So if you had a one in a thousand chance for each of the three probability distributions in order to find the one in a billion chance where those three of those combined to cause a disaster, you'd have to do, well, at least a billion trials or to be statistically significant 10 billion trials. And nobody does that. So that means the long tail low likelihood events that can conspire together are just ignored and thrown away. Our process doesn't do that.

Gaye Francis (12:57):

I think that was my takeaway from the conference was that there was a real want to focus on top-down criticality and vulnerability. And that was from the owner's viewpoint to deliver, because there's a lot of big projects going on in Australia at the moment.

Richard Robinson (13:13):

And they're still going over budget badly.

Gaye Francis (13:16):

But the tools and techniques that are being currently used by organisations to identify the key risk issues for projects is still very much bottom up and lower level, the more likely lower consequence ones. So identify your potential project showstoppers first, and then the other stuff is done secondary. But you do need to do both processes.

Richard Robinson (13:41):

That's correct. And you'll find that all the senior decision makers, once you hit a potential showstopper, they will not let the project proceed. They will not let the tender be let until you have shown why that will not be the case, why it can't happen.

Gaye Francis (13:55):

So this is sort of a passion subject for me in particular, but I hope you enjoyed the podcast today and that you can join us next time.

The Demise of ALARP in Victoria Major Hazards (and the continuing debate on ALARP vs SFAIRP)

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 2, Episode 2

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the continuing controversy surrounding ALARP (As Low As Reasonably Practicable) and SFAIRP (So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable) and explain why they believe there is a difference between the two concepts. 

They also recap (further to Episode 1 Season 2) their experience at a recent VCAT case in Victoria where major hazards were assessed based on consequence rather than quantified risk. They conclude that ALARP no longer exists in Victoria - something they're very happy about. 

Please note, it is important to consult with your legal counsel and if they're comfortable with the approach and the method for technical issues.  Contact us if you’d like a chat.

Safety in Design

RisK! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 2, Episode 1

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance podcast, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss a recent case they were involved in as expert witnesses at the VCAT Tribunal. The case involved a young couple who wanted to build two townhouses on a property that was within a major hazard facility contour line. The local council rejected their planning permit based on advice from WorkSafe. The couple sought help from R2A (Richard & Gaye's consulting business), who advised them on safety measures to address the hazards associated with the facility. 

Watch the podcast recording

Megan (Producer) (00:02):

Welcome to the first episode of Season 2 of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis talk about safety in design, especially in relation to a recent VCAT tribunal they were expert witnesses in.

(00:24):

We hope you enjoy the episode. Please give us any feedback on topics that you would like us to cover and please subscribe on your favorite platform and also give us a rating.

Gaye Francis (00:37):

Hi Richard. Welcome to another podcast recording.

Richard Robinson (00:42):

Hi Gaye. It's good to be here.

Gaye Francis (00:44):

Today we thought we'd talk about a recent job that we've been working on, which was a hearing in the VCAT Tribunal -- Victorian...

Richard Robinson (00:52):

Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Gaye Francis (00:54):

Thank you for that! VCAT. And what happened was a young couple came to us and they were trying to put a planning permit in with a local council that had got rejected. And the reason for its rejection... It was a single dwelling at the moment, an old house that they wanted to pull down and put two townhouses on, and it was rejected on advice from WorkSafe that it was now in a major hazard facility contour line, which we'll go into in a little bit more detail. And their argument was that the new two townhouses had a greater exposure, or exposed potentially more people, to this hazard than was existing in the original dwelling.

Richard Robinson (01:44):

That's right. So the argument was that there were four people in the original dwelling with two houses side by side. There'd be eight people and it was unreasonable to increase the number of people on a societal risk basis.

Gaye Francis (01:55):

So for this reason, even though WorkSafe wasn't an authority, a planning authority to be able to reject it, that advice went to the council and it was rejected on those grounds by council under their planning permit scheme. So they sort of turned up here (at R2A) and said: Ah, what do we do with this? Are you able to help us?

Richard Robinson (02:17):

Yeah. But we basically said to them, well, from the point of view of an explosion coming from a major hazard facility and you're now within the consequence contour, there are two core hazards. And the first one, which has always been well known is that if you have an explosion coming your way, windows blow in and you can get the windows that turn into glass shards. This is a particularly well-known terrorist technique, which I've got to say Bob Browning, whom you recall, talked to me all those years ago and it arose from the (Hilton) Hotel bombing in Sydney, which is now so long ago (1978). I don't suppose anybody actually remembers about it, but the notion, and we've done work on major hazards facilities for a munitions plant in

(02:52):

Moama and the other one up in Shepparton, right at the back of Shepparton. And the idea that what you need to do to make sure that windows don't blow in and ensure explosion over pressure don't cause you problems is well known. At that institution, we were using NATO design standards for this purpose. It's not something you traditionally do, I've got to say.

(03:12):

Anyway, we sort of pointed out there's two core hazards, the windows blow in and shrapnel and the other one, which happens particularly if you put up a tile roof and you've got little gargoyles or something on it, the explosion, you pick up the roof tiles, knock 'em off, and the roof tiles can fall to the ground and clunk people down below. And for both these, if they get a pretty serious hazard and you need to address them.

(03:29):

And the two most obvious controls to do here is have a mental roof, a color bond roof of some sort, which they already had on their plans. And the other thing was to have laminated windows, a matter which they thought they had because they had to have energy efficient building. And one of the things, and one of the ways you do that is to have laminated windows. And the reason for that is that if the window blows in, it just holds the glass together. It's not a question of the robustness of the lamination. I mean, if you're really...

Gaye Francis (03:56):

...It just holds the shards together.

Richard Robinson (03:57):

The shards together. If you're really serious about this sort of stuff, you can have a window that'll withstand 3 0 3 bullets, but that's not what we need in this instance. Just got to hold the glass together. And interestingly enough, when you looked at the safety case guideline that the major hazards' site produced, if they said: if you had a problem, go inside and close your window curtains. And the reason we do that is so that when the glass shards happen, the curtains catch 'em.

(04:20):

Anyway, the council in the meantime was then saying, just don't increase the density. And then they started talking about it, or the lawyer for the council started talking about, having emergency procedures, which doesn't make any sense at all because you're talking about an explosion and explosions go sort of just slightly faster than the speed of sound, which is about 340 meters a second. Now they're about 500 meters from the boundary and about 750 meters from the probable hazard source, the explosion's going to arrive to two to three seconds. There's nothing you can do!

Gaye Francis (04:49):

Doesn't give you much time to enact an emergency evacuation plan. And probably the safest place to be would be inside anyway rather than outside and trying to evacuate some way.

Richard Robinson (05:00):

Well, I was living in North Melbourne with my family when the Butler's Transport fire blew up (1985) and I felt the windows rattle, galloped outside to have a look. That was probably about 2km away for me at the time. I knew it was an over pressure. You could feel the shockwave, couldn't see anything. And then I sort of saw it in the news later that day. But I was sufficiently far away that once... In fact, the consequence line was a kilometer away from the site boundary. And I've got to say, based on what we've seen and what popped up in the tribunal, I think that was probably a correct boundary distance.

(05:33):

The next podcast we're going to do is going to talk about the consequences of the major hazards regulator in Victoria, creating a consequence boundary, which we have to say is one of the best things that could ever have happened that we've been waiting for for the last 20 years.

(05:48):

But what I want to particularly just comment on was the actual way in which the VCAT tribunal operated, and from our point of view as experts, what this means. We sort of talked about it and as an overall observation we're pretty impressed with the VCAT process, although we were a little bit cranky about how long it all took.

Gaye Francis (06:05):

It was a very long drawn out process.

Richard Robinson (06:07):

But that's fair enough. And the decision still hasn't been made and we're not sure when that will happen. But for various reasons, and I'm pretty sure VCAT is overloaded, because one of the things that these consequence curves around the major hazard facilities has (resulted in) there's been a deluge of VCAT planning appeal cases going on to the Supreme Court. So the sheer amount of energy and resources going to resolving this is absolutely stupendous.

Gaye Francis (06:34):

And that's based on a single change; that it changed from a risk contour to a consequence contour. And so a lot more buildings or potential properties in these municipalities that have major hazard facilities are impacted by this change.

Richard Robinson (06:48):

Correct. Now one of the problems we had, because we're acting as experts, so when you return up as an expert, you are acting on behalf of the tribunal. You're not meant to be an advocate speaking on behalf of your client. Whereas the council actually had a lawyer representing them. And so an awful lot of the proceedings was taken up by legal argument between what planning rules applied, what planning precedence would take the case, i.e. the laws of man. Now we were trying to articulate the laws of nature. Just as an observation, I was a bit surprised that we were the only experts in the room. I was rather anticipating the council might have a technical expert and maybe the major hazard facility and even major hazards regulator might think it was worthwhile turning up to provide some insight so the laws of nature could be established clearly between all of the technical parties. That did not happen.

Gaye Francis (07:37):

I guess just clarifying that though, the technical arguments that were made during those practice meetings were apparently tested back with the technical experts in each of those organisations of the major hazard facility and WorkSafe, is our understanding. And then it was sort of brought them back to VCAT in the next session that: yes, we can confirm that that is the case.

Richard Robinson (08:00):

Well, that's the way we interpret their presentation as made by their submissions as made by their lawyers that the technical experts had reviewed our expert report and said: yeah, what we've said was fair.

Gaye Francis (08:10):

That's correct.

Richard Robinson (08:11):

That was my understanding. But you see, we were actually acting as, not as advocates but as assisting the tribunal. So we tried to put forward the most comprehensive understanding we could for the benefit of the tribunal. And to do that, we actually adopted our threat barrier technique, which paralleled the major hazards organisation's same process. And we basically confirmed that we thought what they were saying and what the regulator was doing was making a great deal of sense. And so if you look at the hierarchy control, the elimination option, delete the major hazard facility or delete the houses, that wasn't going to happen, nor was anybody contemplating that. Then you're looking at the preventative side to make sure the thing didn't happen in the first place and you had a five-year rolling safety case, which everybody seems to agree is working well because there'd been no incidents from this site and it had been around for a long time. I'm pretty sure I can remember going there 30 years ago and doing various safety case work. And so then it became down right to the mitigation, i.e. the question of how you would deal with the hazards after the explosive over pressure came this way towards these young couples' proposed development. And there were basically five controls.

(09:23):

It's just attenuation, the pressure attenuation by distance and it's generally cube law for at least a point explosion in space because the explosion's expanding as a cubic volume sphere. When it's close to the ground, it just gets a bit more problematic because you've got this pressure wave coming back up so you get a hemispherical wave. So it's a bit hard to sometimes figure out. And also you don't know where the explosion's going to be because it's a gas cloud. You don't know if its reaches, their fuel mixture, you dunno when it's going to find the ignition source. There's such a fabulous array of problems.

Gaye Francis (09:59):

And unknowns that change the circumstances almost every time that condition happens.

Richard Robinson (10:04):

The very rare occasion... I mean one of the ones that always fascinated me was that Professor Dougle Drysdale from Edinburgh University talking about the Bunsfield explosion sort of said the stoic metric mixture could only occur because they pollarded the trees in a way that it actually created a mixing device to get the air explosion mix just right before it found the ignition source, which apparently was a fire pump of vaguely ironically. But anyway.

(10:29):

The point was then you had the attenuation, then you had from our point of view, the controls to stop the explosion, pushing the glass in and knocking things off the roof.

Gaye Francis (10:38):

So building in design type stuff.

Richard Robinson (10:41):

Safety in design, basically.

Gaye Francis (10:42):

Safety in design.

Richard Robinson (10:43):

Then you had let's not have too many people there. And the last one was the emergency procedures, both of which we didn't think were particularly effective. And that came out.

(10:54):

What we didn't do because our young people didn't have any lawyer to cross examine us and draw out from us what were the really important points, i.e. the advocate's point. And as experts were not in a real position to say it. Was to actually just hammer the importance of what we're saying. And that was, and so I guess I'll just summarise it now, if we were the advocate of what we would've said. Now these young people didn't know this problem existed until somebody told them mid last year and they had their planning and building permits ready to roll. They have absolutely no control over this explosion and pressure wave coming their way. There is nothing they can do from their point of view, this is just like a force of nature, something they have to deal with. The two core hazards that they have to deal with after talking to competent consulting engineers, are the windows blowing in and the roof bits coming off.

Gaye Francis (11:43):

That were confirmed by the major hazard facility and WorkSafe.

Richard Robinson (11:46):

Correct. And in order to eliminate that hazard, what they had to do was have a steel roof, colorbond roof, and laminate the windows. And if they did that, they practically would've eliminated the hazard at the distance which they are because the attenuation did give them a lot of benefit.

(12:03):

Under the legislation, that's the OHS Act in Victoria, which is the enabling legislation for major hazards, you have to eliminate hazards so far as reasonably practicable and if you can't eliminate them and only then do you reduce them. The elimination option, they already had a colorbond roof. So you can't say that's prohibitively expensive or difficult. And to laminate the windows, well they actually suspected they already were, but the architect hadn't defined that because of the rejection of the permit. But to actually include that was trivial. You are not allowed to go to the next option, which is to reduce the number of people at risk, if you can eliminate the hazard in the first place. It doesn't matter if there's four or eight people, if the hazard's been eliminated, it is completely irrelevant. And to even discuss emergency procedures for an explosive potential where the best thing to do is just to rush in the house and lock yourself in and be secure...

Gaye Francis (12:59):

Nonsensical, isn't it?

Richard Robinson (13:00):

Nonsensical. But we didn't say that because we weren't allowed to act as advocates. And so I guess we have sort of, that's the one part of the process I didn't like, but we'll have to see what happens.

Gaye Francis (13:14):

And I guess that just also draws out the difference between the requirements under planning permit rules and the planning permit schemes compared to the OHS legislation and how do they fit in together and what councils are expected to do about it. And I think this is something that it's a bigger issue, isn't it? That needs to be thought through.

Richard Robinson (13:36):

Well, what puzzles us, and again we made it clear in our expert statement, which I presume if anybody wants a copy of, we can actually provide because it's our opinion, there's no reason why we can't. But I was pointing out how the gas pipeline people, high pressure gas pipeline, which we've done a lot of work for, we put engineering design calls in regularly and everyone signs off and the council signs off and Energy Safe Victoria signs off. We're actually sort of nonplus as to what's actually going on here. And particularly in terms of the council, it's like the council de-engineered itself. There were no experts from the council.

Gaye Francis (14:09):

Not technical experts.

(14:12):

Especially if your municipality's dealing with these sort of hazards, you would expect some sort of understanding within the council of those and what you can put in place. Because I would think from a council viewpoint, development's good! And as we talked about with our clients or with the young people is their house is actually safer than the older houses. If they put this new design in.

Richard Robinson (14:38):

It's safer for the eight people. If you leave it the way it is, it's more dangerous...

Gaye Francis (14:42):

...for the four people.

Richard Robinson (14:43):

And that means it's in everybody's interest to have it done.

Gaye Francis (14:47):

So if you take this as an overarching principle that you put these safety in design controls in place for new developments, all of a sudden in areas that do have major hazard facilities, you will get a safer community.

Richard Robinson (15:02):

The community will be more resilient, which is what everybody wants.

Gaye Francis (15:06):

So we hope you found our podcast, interesting today. Thank you for joining us and we hope you get to see you all or hear you next time we put it in a podcast. Thank you.