Criticality & Design and Climate Change Design Options (Season 3 Wrap)

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 3, Episode 10

In the final episode of Season 3, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the theme of criticality and design in the context of climate change and sustainability due diligence. 

They discuss:

• The consequences of redirecting rivers for irrigation, 

• Why the Victorian Government built the, to now, unused desalination plant, and argue if they should be considering the potential impacts of global warming,

• Three possible design solutions: Sun shields, increasing cloudiness, and fertilising the Southern Ocean to address climate change, and

• How knowledge, technology and costs of design solutions are constantly changing. 

The textbook where the three design solutions are highlighted is R2A’s Engineering Due Diligence which you can purchase online.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this last episode of season three, due diligence engineers, Richard Roberson and Gaye Francis wrap up the season that's had a theme on criticality and design and discuss it in the context of climate change and sustainability due diligence.

(00:21):

We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, get in touch via admin@r2a.com au. And look out for season four.

Gaye Francis (00:39):

Hi Richard, welcome to another podcast session. Today we're actually wrapping up season three.

Richard Robinson (00:46):

Yeah, it's our 30th (episode), which is a bit of a surprise to both of us.

Gaye Francis (00:50):

It is. There've been some interesting topics along the way, some good sessions recorded. But we're just reflecting on what we've sort of covered in season three and there's been a real commonality of thread, throughout many of the sessions this season. And that's on criticality and design. And we've, as many of you who have listened to us before, Richard and I, I've been against risk assessment for many, many years. The appreciation of consequence and likelihood. And so I've always focused on that criticality. But I think bringing in the design element this season, what are the credible critical issues and then what can you do to address these? And the way that we thought we'd sort of wrap up this season was by giving an example on climate change or a sustainability due diligence example that we've written up in our (Engineering Due Diligence) textbook. So we think that sort of brings all of this together quite nicely.

Richard Robinson (01:49):

Yeah, we have two examples in there. The first was the Aral Sea, which during in the Soviet Union days, they decided to actually take the two rivers that kept the Aral Sea full and redirect them for irrigation to grow cotton, sort of a bit like the Murray Darling basin and growing cotton there, because cotton's a very water hungry crop. And the consequence of this was: Yes, it worked really well. Yes, they did grow a lot of cotton, but the consequence was the water and the rivers got used up, or one of them at any rate, and the Aral Sea basically dried out, which basically was an inland sea which affected a substantial area, it protected the desert and did all sorts of good things for the local community. And there was an awful lot of fishing going on and once obviously it dries up, no more fish and all those consequence flowed.

(02:34):

So that was just sort of an observation about criticality and failure to take the sort of test of foreseeability in what you might reasonably expect it to do something about it.

(02:43):

But the one that is a more larger scale, one is issue of global warming. Now climate change is a sort of one of those topics that everyone can get excited about. But if you just look at the CSIRO studies of seas around Australia in the last hundred years, it's increased by about a degree. What was never clear to me, I've got to say, whether it's global (warming), the climate's changes all the time. We used to have ice ages, so I never quite understood why people seem to think the climate in some way is fixed. Nobody's arguing over 10,000 years ago we had an ice age and we're apparently in a fairly warm period, but the climate continues to change and there are other things that affect it.

(03:15):

For example, when Krakatoa blew up, so far as they can tell, it reduced the temperature of the planet by about 1.2 degrees for a couple of years because the increased dust in the atmosphere just reflected more sunlight back. So the place cooled down. Although rely on Krakatoa to cool the planet or another event like that, is possibly not the way to manage things.

Gaye Francis (03:32):

Probably not. I think there'd be some better design solutions.

Richard Robinson (03:35):

And the example we give in the book. You've taken a criticality viewpoint, if it goes up by two degrees, everyone sort of says the water will rise by another half a meter or something like that, which perhaps won't be too bad. But after a couple of degree warming, nobody is really too sure what happens next. Because there have been times in planetary history where that occurs.

(03:54):

And then something like the Greenland ice sheet could melt, which would raise the water level something like seven meters. Now seven meter sea level increase in Melbourne for example would be serious. Now this is a critical issue and it's clearly credible. How likely it is? Got no idea. It's certainly possible. The temperature's increasing. It's certainly possible. But other things could happen. I mean, as I said, if another Krakatoa goes off the planet will suddenly cool. In fact, one of the articles I remember reading in the 1970s, pollution was so high it actually was cooling the planet because the particles in the air, and part of the problem we've had is actually cleaning the environment up! Which is sort of one of those reverse arguments that you don't really want to hear too much about.

(04:38):

But anyway, that actually leads on to say: Okay, it's a critical issue. If it happened, it would affect Melbourne, the capital of Victoria (Australia) violently. We've witnessed the cabinet in Victoria when we had a critical issue like the drought and the desalination plant. Just for record, we've got a desal plant in Victoria, it cost about $5.7b to build. It costs us $1.6 million a day and by the time we've finished paying it off, and if you're paying water rates in Melbourne, you will know about this. It's going to cost us about $25b when the time we've finished at the end of the procurement period. And we haven't taken any water from it. And you sort of got to go: Well, why do we have one of these things?

(05:19):

And the answer is it's a criticality driven argument. We had 10 years drought around Australia, particularly in Victoria, and this is around when they built the thing about 2010, if you come to a view as a cabinet that there's a credible possibility that if that 10 year drought continues, the drought continues another 10 years that a major Australian population center could actually run out of water, like what happened in South Africa, and you have the resource to fix it in some way, what will you do as a responsible cabinet?

(05:49):

The answer is you will put something in place to make sure it can't happen. A risk investment argument would say: Don't do it, it's not commercially viable.

Gaye Francis (05:59):

No. But the criticality and design...

Richard Robinson (06:02):

Basically says you have to do it.

(06:04):

So what happens if you apply the same argument the cabinet and the legislation says they're required to the possibility of Melbourne flooding due to global warming? The answer is what are the options that are available to you in a design term? The answer seems to be there are currently three possible options.

(06:21):

One is to put sun shields up at the Laggrangian L1 Point that's between the earth and the sun. It's a negative gravity point. NASA has costed this. It's in the trillions, Victoria can't afford it. Not going to happen.

Gaye Francis (06:37):

Probably not reasonable.

Richard Robinson (06:38):

The second option is to, and Cambridge University engineers have designed this, you squirt basically pollutants into the upper atmosphere to increase the albedo effect to reflect more sunlight away from the planet and cool it down that way. And for the most part it would just be lots more clouds because the whiter you can make it, it's like you'd be aware with snow that the dark spots collect the heat and therefore the dark spots grow where the sunlight gets reflected with the white snow. So if you increase the cloudiness of the planet, it'll reflect more heat into space. That would require putting balloons up and high pressure pumps. It's actually isn't that much water and it is actually entirely doable, but the cost is still in the multi biillion level. And there's some trials fiddling around with people trying to see what are the best types of chemical. Water vapor seems to be a popular idea, but you might want to enhance that slightly.

(07:32):

The third one, which is the cheapest one, which frankly some idiot American already tried, is that in the southern ocean, which is close to where we are, around Antarctica, every year you get this giant upwelling of, with the weather changes and currents and so forth, you get this giant up welling of nutrients that encourages algae. The krill will turn up and consume the algae and then the whales turn up and consume the krill. And if you put more fertilizer into these areas, you could increase the algal bloom violently. As I said, some American actually already tried this. You just picked a piece of ocean went out there with a ship and chucked a whole load of fertilizers to see what would happen. And yes, it created an algal bloom. Wasn't a particularly scientific experiment and all the scientists actually recoiled in horror, but theoretically this would work.

(08:22):

Now the consequences are to actually put ship loads of stuff down there in the billions of dollars, it's in the range, same range of costs as the desal plant. Now when you spend 5 billion on chucking fertilizer into the Southern ocean at different points to see what would happen, it will increase the algae, undoubtedly, that will increase the krill and the further consequence presumably would be fat whales. But these are one of the logical consequences of the argument. But this is actually something Victoria could afford and would change the climate because it would create a carbon sink and pull by the dead algae, the krill wouldn't consume at all. And imagine the whales, unless they breed their population that fast, couldn't consume all the krill, so all that would sink into the very cold ocean and it would just become a carbon sink. Now that would reduce the human impact of carbon. If the climate is changing naturally, which it likely is anyway, it obviously won't reduce that component. So there's some delicate balances that would have to go on here. And if you were going to do this, I'd seriously recommend some validation and verification of the entire process because if you did happen to send the climate into a total flip it so it went into an ice age, that would be frowned upon.

Gaye Francis (09:38):

Yes. It probably wouldn't be the success that you wanted it to be. <laughs>

(09:44):

So by using that example, I think Richard's shown that it really is about the criticality and the design options that you could put forward to test for reasonableness. And those design options are changing.

Richard Robinson (09:56):

Every day.

Gaye Francis (09:57):

Every day. We are just reflecting on how quickly a society's changing, but also the...

Richard Robinson (10:03):

The costing of the putting up the sunshades to cool the planet, you'd have these spinning discs of things, that was when Elon Musk didn't have SpaceX, and if he actually gets his big spaceship going, that cost of that activity would probably decline by order of magnitude compared to what NASA's original estimates were. So that just gives you an idea of how fast all this is changing.

Gaye Francis (10:28):

So 10 years maximum, these things have changed. So the options are available going forward are changing as well. But also the cost and the reasonableness, how easy things are to do is also changing. And I'm sure we've used this example many times about the personal pilotage units for pilots on big vessels. 15 years ago they were big, heavy, almost bricks, weren't they? Big laptops and required their own backpack. Whereas now it's tablet size, iPhone size, and as Richard says, the capability of all of this technology is also increasing.

Richard Robinson (11:10):

Well, particularly once you start throwing AI into the mix the way and the monitoring capability - I can't remember if we said in the last episode, I was just talking to my GP and he just the AI is better at diagnosing from CAT scans now than medical specialists are. And that only happened the last couple of years, just like that.

Gaye Francis (11:32):

And I think that introduction of robotics and AI is something that we're going to have to consider as engineers going forward and what space they can play on, what role they can play in the safety space in particular, but that might be a podcast for next season.

Richard Robinson (11:46):

The dangers of AI, another podcast, and the intellectual understanding of it would actually be useful. The idea that I'm going to have the opportunity to explain to Gaye what a collapsing wave function is and what Schrodinger's cat is all about, is one of the more interesting things to look forward to.

Gaye Francis (12:02):

Yes, I've been working with Richard for over 20 years and sometimes I still have to ask him to repeat himself on a number of occasions to figure out what he's talking about! But that's okay.

(12:14):

So I think that was sort of where we wanted to leave season three. Hopefully we've brought it all together, but the key takeouts from this is really that focus on criticality and design. Next season, season four, we are looking at probably doing some, or we'd like to do some sessions that are industry specific. So we're thinking dams, rail, aviation, possibly electrical networks and water dams maybe. But we'd love to hear any ideas that anyone else has got out there that they'd like to hear Richard and I have a little bit of a chat about for 10 minutes or so.

(12:53):

So thanks for joining us for season three. We hope you enjoyed it and hope you can join us for season four.

Richard Robinson (12:59):

Thanks, Gaye.

Gaye Francis (13:00):

Thanks Richard.

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

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 9

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

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

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

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

Access the episode’s full transcrip below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

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

Gaye Francis (00:31):

Hi Richard, welcome to a podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:33):

Morning Gaye. How are you?

Gaye Francis (00:34):

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

Richard Robinson (01:08):

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

Gaye Francis (01:13):

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

Richard Robinson (01:20):

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

Gaye Francis (01:23):

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

Richard Robinson (02:04):

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

Gaye Francis (03:10):

Well before my time, Richard.

Richard Robinson (03:12):

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

(03:43):

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

Gaye Francis (04:09):

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

Richard Robinson (04:22):

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

Gaye Francis (05:12):

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

Richard Robinson (05:45):

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

(06:47):

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

Gaye Francis (06:51):

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

Richard Robinson (07:09):

High consequences low likelihood events.

Gaye Francis (07:11):

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

Richard Robinson (07:25):

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

Gaye Francis (08:46):

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

Richard Robinson (08:56):

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

Gaye Francis (09:05):

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

Richard Robinson (09:08):

Not from a developer. No.

Gaye Francis (09:11):

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

Richard Robinson (09:21):

Bushfire overlay zone.

Gaye Francis (09:22):

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

Richard Robinson (09:46):

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

Gaye Francis (10:30):

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

Richard Robinson (10:48):

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

Gaye Francis (10:56):

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

Richard Robinson (11:14):

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

Gaye Francis (11:19):

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

Richard Robinson (11:22):

You're speaking as a mother.

Gaye Francis (11:25):

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

Richard Robinson (11:35):

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

Gaye Francis (12:02):

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

Richard Robinson (12:10):

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

Gaye Francis (12:14):

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

Richard Robinson (12:25):

Thanks.

How Standards stifle innovation

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 3, Episode 8

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

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

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

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

Gaye Francis (00:29):

Hi Richard, welcome to a podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:32):

Hello Gaye. We're back again.

Gaye Francis (00:33):

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

Richard Robinson (00:45):

Every time.

Gaye Francis (00:47):

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

Richard Robinson (01:06):

Correct. And the standards come second, not first.

Gaye Francis (01:10):

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

Richard Robinson (01:36):

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

Gaye Francis (01:50):

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

Richard Robinson (02:08):

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

Gaye Francis (02:46):

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

Richard Robinson (02:50):

It wasn't done.

Gaye Francis (02:51):

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

Richard Robinson (02:57):

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

Gaye Francis (03:00):

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

Richard Robinson (03:14):

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

(04:01):

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

(04:45):

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

Gaye Francis (05:02):

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

Richard Robinson (05:20):

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

Gaye Francis (05:30):

No, it doesn't.

Richard Robinson (05:31):

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

(06:26):

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

(07:14):

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

(08:06):

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

Gaye Francis (08:50):

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

Richard Robinson (09:08):

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

Gaye Francis (09:36):

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

Richard Robinson (09:41):

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

Gaye Francis (09:45):

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

Richard Robinson (09:54):

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

Gaye Francis (10:28):

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

Richard Robinson (10:32):

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

Gaye Francis (10:37):

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

Richard Robinson (11:09):

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

Gaye Francis (11:45):

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

Richard Robinson (12:18):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (12:18):

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

Richard Robinson (12:32):

Thanks Gaye.

Risk Appetite versus Zero Harm & the Confusion at Board levels

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 7

In this podcast episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the concept of risk appetite versus zero harm and the confusion it creates at board levels because they're trying to put all of their risk issues into a single statement.

They discuss how a risk appetite is about balancing risk and reward, whereas zero harm is about nothing bad happening, and this gets uncomfortable when applying risk appetite to human safety. 

They outline the commonly applied risk paradigms and how a synthesis of risk appetite in commercial and safety practice does occur in project due diligence.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode’s transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss risk appetite versus zero harm. We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also, don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, email via admin@r2a.com au.

Gaye Francis (00:31):

Hi Richard. Welcome back to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:34):

Hello Gaye. Here we are again.

Gaye Francis (00:35):

We are. Today we're going to talk about probably something that I find one of the most interesting topics in our business, and that's risk appetite versus zero harm and the concepts of the two, and the confusion that it's creating at board levels because they're trying to put all of their risk issues into a single statement. And it sort of comes up as that risk appetite statement, doesn't it, at a board level. The easiest way probably to explain it is to maybe go through the three different risk paradigms that we see most commonly used, and then have a discussion around that and why the confusion exists.

Richard Robinson (01:16):

Yeah, because obviously just for the point of the confusion, if you say risk appetite, you've got to balance risk and reward on the one hand, whereas zero harm says nothing bad's going to happen. But when you start applying risk appetite to human safety, you sort of get an unpleasant feeling about the whole thing. And that's where the boards are getting this confusion.

(01:32):

Now, we've noticed this tension over the years in all sorts of places, and the way we normally explain it's to sort of go through these three paradigms or ways of thinking about risk. And we suspect there's more than these around in the risk business. We keep saying it's a multidimensional space, but these are the three. Now, when you talk about risk appetite, you're basically saying, look, we've got a certain course of action and it's got pluses and minuses, and if you've got multiple courses of action, you pick the one with the greatest pluses and the least minuses. That'd be a sensible thing to do. And in order to determine what that is, you start talking about risk appetite. And that's the way the commercial people talk about it because they're always talking about upside, downside risk, that that's the way they think.

(02:11):

When you start talking about zero harm, that's the safety people and the safety people are saying, we don't want bad things to happen! From a safety viewpoint, we just want to eliminate them. And we've had this conversation about if the police commissioner says our objectives to sort of stop all child molestation in this city, whilst most of us recognise that, that's probably aspirational, we certainly expect a police commissioner to have that general view on life and to do everything they can to try and achieve that zero harm outcome.

Gaye Francis (02:42):

Yes, he doesn't have a risk appetite for that.

Richard Robinson (02:45):

Does have a risk appetite for child abuse. And the idea that you're going to offset community resources, you're going to do everything you can, but your objective is zero harm. The two make an awful lot of good philosophical sense when you consider one in commercial practice and you present a one in safety practice.

(03:02):

The place where it's you get a synthesis, and we've sort of talked about this a number of times, is project due diligence, which is basically the essence of our text. Because if you have a hundred projects that your business is contemplating, you just systematically work through those looking at the upside and downside risk associated with each project. And if you can afford to do the top 10, you pick the ones with the greatest upside risk profile and the least downside risk profile just from a sensible commercial viewpoint. The trick is, of course, that when you actually start doing any particular project, you want the thing to go smoothly without any hitches or glitches. And that means you are basically saying you're promising the upside risk position. And you're saying from that upside risk position, you want a zero harm outcome. It'll be delivered on time, to budget, nobody gets hurt and all the other good things.

Gaye Francis (03:50):

It'll deliver what it's supposed to deliver.

Richard Robinson (03:53):

So from our point of view, that's when the two actually synthesize. But the rest of the time there's still this underlying confusion.

Gaye Francis (04:02):

And trying to put it into a single statement or a risk appetite statement at a board level for an organization trying to include all of those different elements. It doesn't quite make sense.

Richard Robinson (04:13):

And I've never quite understood it because I mean, historically, a lot of organisations used to split their commercial decisions and commercial risk management away from their safety decision and their safety risk management. And whilst I understand that the two overlap, to a point. I mean, one of the points of the WHS legislation, it basically doesn't say go and work out cost benefit for controls. It basically says, work out what can be done, and before you start thinking about costs, work out the possible practical control before you start thinking about costs and then consider the cost, secondly.

Gaye Francis (04:48):

Well, I mean the WHS legislation's really asking, why wouldn't you do something rather than creeping up on it and saying why you would do something.

Richard Robinson (04:57):

Correct. And you can see how the two ideas sort of dance around each other so far as we can tell. And when we make the remark that risk is this sort of complex space and you can cut it through in different ways. My actual guess is that probably what you need to do if it's a commercial matter, is cut it through the commercial risk assessment tools and if it's a safety risk matter, cut it through with a safety risk tools, which has a zero harm philosophy lurking in the background. And if it's project risk, well then you probably will be doing both.

Gaye Francis (05:27):

Yeah. I think the environmental factors, environmental organisations are getting more to the zero harm model. That's sort of the tendency. Victoria has changed their legislation to be so SFAIRP.

Richard Robinson (05:43):

But all the other legislative zones use the RIO principle, where there's serious environmental harm, you should do everything to postpone and prevent environmental degradation. I can't remember the exact words of the RIO convention off the cuff now, but it actually has the same general philosophy. You sort of say, if this is really bad, you've got to do everything you can to make sure it doesn't go wrong, and you figure out what can be done first and then you work out the costs second.

Gaye Francis (06:09):

So I guess there's two courses of actions that boards or organisations can do. They can do the one that you just said and separate out the commercial issues from the safety issues, or you could have just an overall risk position statement that included all of those things. But I think the key thing, and the thing that we sort of try to educate boards on is that there are those different ways of thinking about things, and you will get different insight depending on which risk paradigm you apply at the time.

Richard Robinson (06:35):

Well, you always favour the risk position statement that does give the board a unified proposition without committing themselves. I guess it's nuanced, but nuances are sometimes necessary.

Gaye Francis (06:49):

So that's quite interesting. Any final comments? I think it was just one of those topics that we've seen boards struggle with a little bit and this insight, and I think the project (due diligence) was sort of the one that brought those two concepts together.

Richard Robinson (07:05):

Well, I think it's more than that though, because you see, the way we run the project (due diligence) was remember, you basically have the promised upside risk position and you do everything you can to make sure that nothing goes wrong. That is actually the safety position. And I've got to say that our experiences, when we've done project due diligence reviews for about $10 million to about $3 billion Australian dollars worth, none of them ever gone over time of budget, have they?

Gaye Francis (07:27):

No. I think the other key thing to that, and they've probably done the commercial thing really well, or the upside downside risk position well, is they've been very good at articulating what the benefits are of the project.

Richard Robinson (07:39):

 Correct.

Gaye Francis (07:39):

So the upside position or that risk appetite position is well known, and then you're doing that downside or zero harm study from that position. Where it starts to get really difficult for projects is when they're unable to clearly articulate what the key benefits of the project are.

Richard Robinson (08:00):

Yeah, I'd have to agree with that.

Gaye Francis (08:01):

What you're trying to achieve.

Richard Robinson (08:03):

One of the things we always have difficulty with the project due diligence is getting, you might recall a couple of projects we were asked to look at, and if they couldn't articulate what they're set out to achieve, then it's virtually impossible to risk manage it because the goal posts keep changing.

Gaye Francis (08:21):

And that comes at a number of levels. I mean, that comes at your stakeholder engagement, and all of the stakeholders have to agree to what those critical success outcomes or what that end prize is for the project. If you've got different stakeholders wanting different outcomes for your project, that risk appetite certainly changes from different people's perspective.

Richard Robinson (08:43):

And that's where the difficulties arise.

Gaye Francis (08:45):

Okay. So I think this is probably an issue that'll continue with organisations.

Richard Robinson (08:52):

It's not going away. Not from what we're seeing.

Gaye Francis (08:54):

But I think if you can clearly see the difference between the ways that people look at things or the ways that you can cut through the risk issues, then that gives you that little bit of extra insight. So thanks for the chat today, Richard, and we'll see you next time.

Richard Robinson (09:09):

Thanks Gaye.

Code of Practice & WHS/OHS Confusion

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 6

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss Code of Practice and WHS/OHS confusion in relation to a presentation they delivered to the Dam Owners and Operators' Forum in Queensland recently, called "How do we do ALARP? Meeting a duty of care." 

They explain how the Code of Practice doesn’t align with WHS/OHS legislation and if you conduct an “augmented ALARP” as suggested by the ANCOLD (Australian National Committee on Large Dams) Guideline it does not promote innovation or an efficient due diligence process. and that this exists in a number of industry guidelines.

They also discuss the Oroville & Edenville Dam breaks (USA), how risk is multidimensional, how many industry guidelines have the same issues, and considering reciprocity as part of diligent decision making.

Access the episode’s full transcript below.

Full transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Episode 6 (Season 3) of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis chat about Code of Practice and WHS confusion.

(00:15):

If you have any feedback or topic ideas, please do get in touch via email admin@r2.com.au. And don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform and to give us a rating.

Gaye Francis (00:30):

Hi Richard. Welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:33):

Hi Gaye. Good to be back.

Gaye Francis (00:35):

Today we're going to talk about the Code of Practice and WHS/OHS confusion and it's sort of in relation to a presentation that we delivered last week to the Dam Owners and Operators' Forum for the Queensland regulator. There were four presenters, and our topic was "How do we do ALARP? Meeting a duty of care."

Richard Robinson (00:58):

And that was with particular regard to the ANCOLD (Australian National Committee on Large Dams) guidelines. And the regulator we're speaking of was the Dam Safety Regulator in Queensland.

Gaye Francis (01:04):

Correct. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification.

(01:08):

So do you want to just run through quickly the difference between the Code of Practice and the WHS/OHS requirements?

Richard Robinson (01:14):

Yeah, because one of the things we realised about the ANCOLD guidelines, they're trying to do two things and we actually suspect those two things at one level are being mandated by the way in which our system set things up. Although we would disagree with the sequence in which you do them.

(01:28):

Now, the first is the WHS legislation. It basically says identify the credible critical issues, identify all the possible practicable controls, in the circumstances work out what's reasonable, and then do that.

(01:41):

The Code of Practice, which has gone through a parliamentary process and is therefore mandated at another level and purports to represent an implementation of the WHS legislation says: Identify the issue. If for known issues, you can just put in recognised good practice. But if you don't know, then you've got to assess the risk before you start looking at the controls, which is the inverse of what the legislation actually calls up.

(02:07):

Now our interpretation of the ANCOLD guidelines is it's basically saying, look, we want you to do in effect what we would call the old way of doing risk assessment, likelihood and consequence, and potentially comparing out the criteria. And then you go do the second process, you say, right, it doesn't matter what the criteria say, is there anything else we can do? So we would tend to refer to that. I think we were talking about it later as augmented ALARP or something like that. And obviously it does both processes. And I think the point we make is that we would've said that's not particularly efficient. We would've said, you want to do what the WHS/OHS legislation asks first, and then if you want to do the second one, particularly if you're trying to work out what's prohibitively dangerous and whether or not, the way you put it, you can 'hop at any time'.

Gaye Francis (02:54):

I think it also, we talked about it before and it's that safety in design review and just putting in recognisable practice or standards that you're not looking for anything new or novel that you can do. And we've used, the one that we use for the dam break is that the current controls to make sure that the dam integrity stays intact and all of that sort of thing is to do regular inspections of the dam to make sure that there's been no movement that can be seen and things like that. And we're saying, well, maybe there's some technology out there that you could monitor the side of a dam and if there's any movement in it, then that could send alarms.

Richard Robinson (03:37):

That was that LIDAR based ground probe system.

Gaye Francis (03:39):

Correct.

Richard Robinson (03:41):

And obviously it'd only work for a hard face dam rather than with grass waving all over it. That wouldn't work. But that technology would work, and we've used it for railway cuttings, it would work really well.

Gaye Francis (03:51):

But that technology and solution doesn't exist in any of the guidelines or good practice that we know of to date.

Richard Robinson (03:58):

And I haven't had a dam person mention it to me. We've been doing it the other way around. Yeah, I would agree.

Gaye Francis (04:05):

So I think by following the Code of Practice and the ANCOLD guidelines, it's sort of doing "same old, same old" and not looking for that innovation.

Richard Robinson (04:16):

And the problem you've got is if you start with the target level of the risk approach and it turns out to be really low...

Gaye Francis (04:23):

What else are you going to do?

Richard Robinson (04:24):

It's hard to get yourself motivated looking for anything else that you could do. It sort of puts you in a culturally... you sort of don't want to do anything else because it doesn't seem much point.

Gaye Francis (04:35):

Well, you're almost in your comfort zone, aren't you?

Richard Robinson (04:38):

In effect. That's right. And you might remember in the presentation, I mean the Oroville Dam spillway break (in California), and I forget which the other dam was, but in each case, the American reviewer saying they were going to go and test what the design philosophy and cultural attitudes of the design team were when the dam was built. Because obviously, I mean we've been through this a number of times before, but in engineering term, the meaning's in the method. The design process will have certain consequences and if you've got a certain design process, you will get certain consequences. And if you look at this thing from different points of view, you do get different insight.

Gaye Francis (05:16):

And I mean, we've touched on this many, many times in our podcast that risk is multidimensional. And if you cut it different ways, if you look at it from a cultural viewpoint, you get a different insight into (as opposed to) if you look at it from a purely technical viewpoint. That dam that you were referring to was the Edenwille Dam (Michigan) break.

Richard Robinson (05:35):

Yeah, that's the other one.

(05:37):

Now, that was the other question which pops up a couple of times because in the safety case guideline, which was one of the reasons that the Dam Safety and Regulator in Queensland was attracted to us giving a presentation because he'd found that to be particularly helpful. But those cultural attitudes, the way you get ideas done. I mean, one of the observation we've had, it's not a bad idea to sort of get the community, who are at risk and brief them and get their feedback on what it all means.

(06:03):

Now, as you pointed out, that doesn't normally happen with dams. And you'd probably expect that it'd be the council who in one way represents the rate payers and residents downstream of a dam in a particular region who would probably have the greatest interest in this. Because there's nothing like having to explain as a dam owner or operator to a group of residents whom if the dam goes wrong, have a good chance of getting killed to actually have to explain what you're doing and why you're doing it. It does tighten up the argument, make it a lot more robust because the argument, the point went back, it's the principle of reciprocity. What you've really got to do is explain to them that as the dam owner an operator, if I was living downstream of the dam, this is what I have to ensure it would be reasonable. So it's that principle of reciprocity again.

Gaye Francis (06:53):

And it provides that transparency that people are looking for. And I think that's what appealed to the Dam Safety Regulator, that sometimes that safety case guideline could be used to establish some of those arguments in a transparent way that could be communicated to those stakeholders.

Richard Robinson (07:11):

Well, I think the thing that interests me the most is the last presenter was the General Counsel for one of the large water authorities in Queensland. And she just basically more or less went through the process the way R2A basically says to do it: Identify the issues, look at all the possible practical controls, determine in the circumstances which are reasonable and do that. Didn't have any problem following the ANCOLD guidelines as well, which was really from our point of view, a double up. And as we mentioned earlier, from the point of view of establishing whether something's prohibitively dangerous after you've put all your controls in place, it's probably not a bad thing to do anyway. So we're certainly not saying that the ANCOLD guidelines are massively in error or anything like that, but I think the difficulty we have is they're still doing it in the reverse order. But you can see from the way in which the legislation has been written and the code of practice has been written, why this confusion exists, it must exist at very high levels in just about every government agency.

Gaye Francis (08:04):

It's in a number of guidelines, isn't it that understanding of what they need to do. I think it's also creating a little bit of double-up work, and the process that it takes, and we've talked about this in a number of other podcasts, compliance with these guidelines and things like that where we are sort of saying, yeah, have a look at them and check them out. But following them as step-by-step guides usually doesn't meet the obligations of the legislation.

Richard Robinson (08:35):

And it certainly doesn't create innovation and create testing for other new ideas that could be potentially valuable. When you follow a standard, you just design to the standard. And that's that.

Gaye Francis (08:48):

And I think that's one of our topics for a podcast to follow. So I think unless you've got any closing comments, Richard, we might wrap this one up for today. So we hope you enjoyed that. It was an interesting presentation. We always enjoy giving these industry based presentations and that insight. So thanks for joining us today and hope you can join us next time.

Richard Robinson (09:10):

Thank you.

Art & Engineering: How being a great artist relates to the engineer's roles

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 5

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the relationship between art and engineering. 

They draw parallels between the roles of artists and engineers, highlighting the importance of composition, execution, and management in both fields. They outline the different types of engineers, such as creators, managers/consultants, and specialists, and the need for all three types in successful engineering organisations. Richard emphasises the importance of recognising and focusing on one's strengths in order to have a satisfying and successful career.  

Their conversation also touches on the challenges of small businesses, the role of innovation, and the limitations of relying solely on standards in engineering.

Read the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss art and engineering and how being a good artist can relate to the different roles of engineers.

(00:16):

We hope you enjoy what we found are very entertaining chat. If so, give us a rating to help spread the word and subscribe to our channel on your favourite platform. Email us admin@r2a.com.au if you have any feedback or topic ideas.

Gaye Francis (00:36):

Hi Richard and welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:39):

Yes, good to see you again, Gaye.

Gaye Francis (00:41):

Good to see you too. Today we're going to talk about one of your topics, philosophy, a philosophical topic, art and engineering, and the links that art has to engineering and the way that we, I guess, manage or deliver engineering projects.

Richard Robinson (01:03):

Not perhaps the way I would've said it, but let's go with that for the start.

Gaye Francis (01:06):

<laughs> Alright.

Richard Robinson (01:08):

Now, for those who are particularly interested in this, I'm basically pinching most of the ideas from this book, "What is Art All About?" by Desiderius Orban, who, I think it was Hungarian who came to Australia, Sydney, when he was about 60yo, and he must have written this book when he was about 90yo, I think. So the moral of all that is you shouldn't give up until you're dead, and then you should reconsider.

Gaye Francis (01:29):

<laughs> So you might get your book done on philosophy and engineering yet, Richard.

Richard Robinson (01:32):

Yeah, it's possible!

(01:35):

Anyway, one of the points he makes, he's trying to explain why it's hard to be a good artist, and the comparison he makes is to music. So if you think about music, like the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) and so forth, if you want a good performance, you've got to have a good composition, i.e. there's got to be a composer, you need a sound conductor who's got to make the whole of she-bang run, and then you've got to have a whole lot of specialist musicians who are all very good at what they do. And if all those three things come together, you get a good result. Now that actually parallels engineering.

(02:04):

This is a discussion I've had with the young engineers pretty regularly because when you're trying to decide how your career goes, you've got to decide which one of these three you can be, because nobody doubts you can be a good composer, nobody doubts you can be a good conductor and nobody doubts you can be a good specialist (musician), like the first violinist for the MSO.

Gaye Francis (02:19):

And I can say he has had that discussion with me many years ago.

Richard Robinson (02:22):

And you have promptly forgotten. So I often wonder whether it was worth the trouble.

Gaye Francis (02:26):

<laughs>

Richard Robinson (02:26):

But anyway...

(02:28):

Now the point about this is when you're a young engineer, you have to decide which one of these things you are. Are you the creator or the designer, the people who love creating new things? Or are you the organiser, the manager, the consulting engineer? Or are you the specialist who becomes super specialised in a particular area of design?

(02:47):

And if you attend a conference or something like that, if you're at a technical conference, you can see all the specialist engineers appearing. But if you want to be a manager, you go and have a look at all the engineers that are attending and doing MBAs, for example, and you get a pretty good idea of what's going on there. But the real entrepreneurs, the ones who really create new designs, they're actually a pretty small group.

(03:09):

Now, the trick that he's making about being a good artist is that in order to be an excellent artist, you have to be excellent at all three. You have to be good at composition, because if you don't have a good idea you won't produce anything worthwhile. You have to be an excellent painter or whatever your art form is because if you can't do it properly, then you won't execute the composition well, that's the specialist part. And you have to able to put it all together, which is the management part. And that's why it's so rare you just can't do it all. I mean, there's lots of excellent painters out there, but it's like a photograph -- it's not actually anything that everyone gets really excited about. Whereas the ones that people get really excited about are the ones where it's actually expresses an idea that you just can't, previously (express); a photograph doesn't cut it, basically.

Gaye Francis (03:55):

And I think we have that conversation in successful businesses as well in organisations, don't we? You have to have all of those three components that have to come together, work really, really well together, to be a successful business.

Richard Robinson (04:09):

That's correct. And the trick is very few of us are all three. We've got elements of each amongst ourselves. Gaye can confirm that my organisational skills are sometimes not as good as they could be.

Gaye Francis (04:21):

And mine are probably better. And so we do complement each other there, Richard.

Richard Robinson (04:25):

And between the two of us, we cover all the gaps. And that's the point.

(04:28):

Now, if you're designing a business, I mean one of the points I've made, if you've ever go into business for yourself and go into a partnership, one of the things I recommend you do early is have a (financial) loss! Because it's all very fine having partners when you're making money, but the first time you make a loss and you've got to share the loss, that's when you find out who your real partners are.

Gaye Francis (04:47):

I think one of the interesting things in this is that you can be a leader in each of those categories. And you don't have to be everything to everybody to be seen as successful. And I think there's a lot of conversations, and especially in the engineering field, that there's a real push to get people to leaders and what does that mean? But I think they're being pushed in that managerial, that middle row, that they're leaders in the management area. But we have so many technical specialists out there that are leaders within their fields as well. But they maybe don't get the recognition. But if we don't have them, then the engineering organisation is nothing.

Richard Robinson (05:31):

Correct. Well, the point is you've got to have all three. And the trick is, and this is just from a personal viewpoint, and this is something you have to discover the hard way, you've got to decide which of these skills or combination of these skills you actually have. Because if you keep trying to do one of these things that you do not possess, it's going to hurt a lot and you can want it, but if you truly don't have it, it's not going to happen.

Gaye Francis (05:53):

It has to come naturally, doesn't it?

Richard Robinson (05:55):

Whereas if you actually pick your strength and effect and work on that, life tends to be a lot more satisfying. And career success seems to be a lot more assured so far as I can tell. But that's just a personal assessment based on my experience of life. You perhaps have others.

Gaye Francis (06:10):

No, it is much easier to do things that you're good at than challenge things that you're not so good at. I think from a small business viewpoint, the entrepreneurial stuff that we sort of not struggle with but is probably the hardest component of small business.

Richard Robinson (06:25):

Correct. But that's the reason why people go into business in the first place.

Gaye Francis (06:29):

And so I think in the last 18 months in particular, we've really tried to concentrate on the thought leadership stuff. What makes us that little bit different from the other organisations that are out there. And once we don't have any new ideas, the big guys just come and swallow us up.

Richard Robinson (06:46):

That's correct. Well, innovation doesn't come from large organisations, usually. It comes from the small guys who are trying to do things.

Gaye Francis (06:52):

And so sometimes we need those really sticky problems or those really difficult problems that you're pulling your hair out at the time. But to come up with that innovation, to come up with those new ideas and then they get refined as time goes on. But that's one of the interesting things of small business.

Richard Robinson (07:10):

I think you're just saying that creativity usually arises when you're under stress.

Gaye Francis (07:14):

<laughs> Well, as an engineer, creativity probably isn't my strongest point, but you know!

Richard Robinson (07:20):

Well, it actually flows in a lot of places though. Because one of the things we've got cranky (about), particularly with Standards Australia, and the way engineering has sort of turned up in the last 20 or 30 years, is that people have started doing design by standards. Now, I don't mean unkind, but innovation does not come through standards. If you want something interesting or different to occur, standards is not the place to do it. And it drives us crackers because in all our due diligence courses, we quote all these lawyers who are saying, the fact that you've complied with the standard does not excuse an engineer from applying their skill and expertise to whatever problem they're looking at.

Gaye Francis (07:55):

To solve the problem.

Richard Robinson (07:56):

And I've always preferred, and I think I've mentioned it before, the 1937 Chairman of Victoria Division's point about standards: Prevent fools from the folly and rogues from their rogoeury. Well, you're supposed to figure out how it ought to be, and then you check back against the standard to make sure you haven't done something daft, that's "fools from their folly". And if you're trying to hang a contractor, well, the easiest way to do it is say you haven't complied with the standard and your toast, but that's not helpful. I mean, it's just something you've got to do sometimes.

Gaye Francis (08:20):

I think there's a slow shift going towards some of the chief engineers that we've been talking to and working with. They're really expecting their engineers to solve the problem first and then go back and check against the standard. And that's what they're trying to encourage. There's a lot of organisations that are just doing the minimum and that's all we're going to do.

Richard Robinson (08:41):

To the standard. And I'm sorry, but if that's all you're doing as an engineer organisation, I don't think you're really an engineering organisation anymore. You're just following the rules, whatever they are. And you don't need to be an engineer to do that.

Gaye Francis (08:56):

That's true.

(08:57):

So any other little tidbits that you've got that you found insightful as art and engineering?

Richard Robinson (09:07):

Not that I'm aware of. I think I just said it, but thank you for the thought.

Gaye Francis (09:11):

<laughs> Alright, well, I'll wrap this podcast up. That was sort of a little bit more entertaining than I thought it was going to be. But thanks for joining us and we hope to see and hear you next time.

Richard Robinson (09:21):

Thanks, Gaye.

Control & Reasonableness in WHS/OHS Legislation

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 3, Episode 4

In this episode, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss control and reasonableness in WHS/PHS legislation. 

They explain that the WHS/OHS legislation is a statutory statement of the common law duty of care and a defence against negligence, and that there’s two primary controls for negligence defence: no power defence (lack of control) and doing every reasonably practicable thing to address the matter. The aspect of control is built into the reasonableness decision in the legislation. 

The episode also covers:

• the importance of not getting caught up in arguments about responsibility and instead taking collective responsibility for addressing hazards. 

• Lord Atkin's question "Who is my neighbour?" and how the legal ruling relates to design process and retrospective design review. 

• the benefits of the due diligence approach in bringing key stakeholders together to collectively address safety issues. 

 The Criminal Manslaughter booklet mentioned can be purchase via our online store.

Read the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss Control and Reasonableness in WHS legislation (Occupational Health and Safety in Victoria). We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating and also subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you have any feedback or topic ideas, get in touch via admin@r2a.com au.

Gaye Francis (00:34):

Hi Richard, welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:37):

Hi Gaye. We're back again.

Gaye Francis (00:38):

We are back again. Today we're going to talk about control and reasonableness in WHS/OHS legislation. And this follows on from some recent reading you've done.

Richard Robinson (00:52):

Well indeed, although it wasn't that recent because we've stuck it in the update of our "Criminal Manslaughter - How Not To Do It" booklet.

Gaye Francis (01:00):

Recent, last couple of months, let's go with that.

Richard Robinson (01:04):

But this flows from the fact that as we've commented a number of times, the WHS legislation is actually a statutory statement of the common law duty of care and as a defense against negligence. Now negligence, and again, we're just responding to what lawyers tell us, in terms of a defense against negligence, there's normally two primary controls. The first is no power defense that you didn't have control of the situation. So basically you can't be held accountable for something over which you do not have control. And the second defense was then in all the circumstances, you'd done every reasonable practical thing to deal with this matter.

(01:39):

Now, I used to wonder in the WHS legislation, they'd never talked about control. It just talked about...

Gaye Francis (01:47):

Reasonableness.

Richard Robinson (01:47):

It had to eliminate hazards so far as reasonably practicable. And if you couldn't eliminate, you've got to reduce them so far as reasonably practicable. And it wasn't until I was re-reading a book by Sherrif and Tooma. Sherrif was one of the lawyers who helped draft the legislation and Michael Tooma is sort of the guru from Sydney on this sort of thing. Just for the record, the book is "Understanding the Model Work Health and Safety Act, and this is on page 19. And the point they make is that they did consider when they were drafting the WHS legislation where they should actually have a section about control and to the extent you had control. And what they basically decided was that from the point of view of determining what's reasonable, that the aspect of control is an aspect of that reasonableness decision.

Gaye Francis (02:31):

Or test. Yeah.

Richard Robinson (02:32):

Or test. And so they built it into it. Now as we commented, I think in our last podcast or one of the other ones we've done, what happens a lot for example is that when you've got a split control, people sort of say: Well, it's your job to do it, and, no it's your job to do it, and then nothing gets done. And you have this extended argument between the parties and eventually somebody's got to say: Well, enough's enough. You've all got responsibilities, you've got to get on with it. And ultimately, obviously it's the PCBU that has to pull the plug and say, enough guys, you've actually got, we actually have to do things. You just can't sit on a problem while you argue whose responsibility it is. And that was one of Barry Sherrif's core remarks when he first drafted the OHS Act in Victoria in 2004, or his report that led to that, was that you just can't keep arguing about it. You've got to get on with it.

Gaye Francis (03:21):

So bringing the issue of who has control into what can be done when you're deciding what the reasonableness of those controls are.

Richard Robinson (03:30):

Now, what really depressed me about all this was just how ancient this problem actually is. You see, I was re-reading something about Lord Atkin, the Brisbane born British Law Lord, well actually he called himself Welsh, Welsh Law Lord, and Donahue versus Stevenson. If anyone's particularly interested, there's a university professor from Saskatchewan (Canada), law professor who was writing up (that) when they get assigned a case, the judges write out notes and so forth. And they do that because if one of them gets sick and another judge has to take over, they get the assistance of all the previous notes. Anyway, in this Atkins actually explaining where he gets his famous quote: The rule that you are to love your neighbor becomes in law, you must not injure your neighbour, and the lawyer's question, Who is my neighbour? receives a restricted reply.

(04:19):

The answer is: You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which might injure your neighbour. Who then in law is your neighbour? The answer seems to be those persons so closely and directly affected by the act, they ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I turn in my mind the acts or omissions, which are called into question.

(04:36):

I'm glad you're enjoying this Gaye.

Gaye Francis (04:38):

Good job! Without even any prompts, I'm impressed.

Richard Robinson (04:42):

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make though, what I found particularly interesting is that the way Lord Atkin actually describes it, that's the quote from the parable of the Good Samaritan, that the lawyer's question: Who is my neighbour? That's actually the introduction to the parable the Good Samaritan. So this is a 2,000 year old question that the lawyers are asking. And the way he actually expresses it is actually as this design philosophy which we've been talking about, you've got to take into account your acts or omissions, which are called into question, meaning after the event when it's all gone horribly wrong and your acts or omissions are being tested to see whether you had or hadn't done what you ought to have done, that's actually the design review process. So he's taking a 2,000 year old lawyer's question and converting it to a design process. And that was 1932, so it's 2,000 years ago to 1932. And it looks like we managed to get this into the Australian parliaments in the form of the WHS legislation in, well, for the most part 2010. So I guess that's a good result. It just seemed like a very long time to me.

Gaye Francis (05:46):

So what we're sort of saying is that they've always looked at it in that way, haven't they? In that what could have happened and what have you failed to do and should have done? Was it reasonable to do so?

Richard Robinson (05:58):

So you've just articulated the basis of moral philosophy, how it ought to have been, and that's basically what it's all about. So I think we've been through this one before, but there's three broad areas of philosophy. Formal philosophy, which is logic, natural philosophy, which is science and moral philosophy, how things ought to be. And that's why the lawyers and the engineers abruptly align because if you just look at any sort of design process, the engineers are designing before the event, and then the lawyers conduct a retrospective design review after the event. And that also explains if anybody's wondering about it, why engineers seem to pick on each other a lot in court. Because basically if you are doing a retrospective design review, who are you going to hire as an expert witness to analyse what an engineer is previously designed?

Gaye Francis (06:41):

Another engineer is all you can do.

Richard Robinson (06:42):

Another engineer is all you can do. You can't do it any other way. So that's what has to happen. I remember talking to one of the people that we've been associated with and asked what you're doing. He said I seem to be mostly just doing expert witness stuff, chiefly against other fire engineers. And I don't whether that's a career move that you want to do, but these things happen.

Gaye Francis (07:01):

I think just touching on that point, that the WHS legislation was trying to move away from (it being) a single person's responsible for making all the decisions. And we've touched on this in a number of other podcasts, and I think one of the benefits of the due diligence approach is that it brings all of the key stakeholders into the same room to talk these issues through. So it's almost a collective responsibility rather than a single person having to take all of that responsibility for the design.

Richard Robinson (07:32):

Which actually drags them through another sort of 2,000 year cycle. If you care about these things. Well, because you remember in the way in which human beings make decisions? The first one's you ask an expert all on the one person, we actually swapped it around because normally we used to say there was the adversarial citizen system next, and then it was inquisitorial last. But in practice, the way the history of the legal system was, the first one was sort of one person deciding, in effect, arbitrarily. That's what an expert does. And then you had an inquisitor, which then asked a whole lot of people to decide who was responsible. It seems I've got... my new in-laws, one of them is a German judge. But obviously they're trained chiefly as criminologists because they have to go around and ask people to find out things. So it's a different, that's what the inquisitor process has to do.

Gaye Francis (08:23):

And then they come to a decision by themselves.

Richard Robinson (08:26):

Well, they can get some advice, but yes, but after having asked everybody. When you get to the last approach, you get a mob of people deciding together. That's what trial by jury is. And in a sense, that's what we've just done the last couple of times we had the best available knowledge in the room. We've gone to a structured process to pick their brains and then basically held up a mirror saying, this is what you said people, is this what you meant? The line: say what you mean, mean what you say.

Gaye Francis (08:55):

We've covered this as well in a number of podcasts. The two final questions that we ask in a workshop situation: Are there any other issues that aren't on the table that we need to discuss? And further, are there any other good ideas that anybody wants to put on the table that we should consider and that sort of sign off of the collective group? As you said, we've got the best available knowledge in the room. We've taken you through a structured process. We've tried our very, very best to get it right and we have been diligent.

Richard Robinson (09:21):

We've been diligent. We can still be wrong, but we've been diligent.

Gaye Francis (09:23):

We've been diligent. That's correct.

Richard Robinson (09:28):

I didn't have any last remarks. I think it's your turn to finish up!

Gaye Francis (09:30):

You don't have any last remarks this time! <laughs>

(09:33):

So I hope you enjoyed today's podcast based on some of the comments, from Tooma. So thank you for joining us and we hope to see you next time.

Richard Robinson (09:45):

Thanks, Gaye.

R2A's Due Diligence Process: Why it works

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 3

In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss R2A's preferred approach to due diligence. 

They explain why they start with a top-down approach, usually starting with the military intelligence, threat and vulnerability technique. And how often organisations who have started with a bottom-up process have been floundering for some time, come to R2A to cut through the detail.

Richard and Gaye also discuss the:

• importance of selecting the right tools and techniques for the job,

• need for multiple perspectives and approaches to ensure a comprehensive analysis, 

• importance of bringing key stakeholders together and the challenges of working in silos, 

• need for preparation and adaptability in the due diligence process.

Read the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis chat about their due diligence process at R2A and why it helps their clients. We hope you enjoy their chat. If you do, please give us a rating. Also, don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform.

Gaye Francis (00:25):

Good morning, Richard. Welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:28):

Morning Gaye. Been a busy couple of weeks.

Gaye Francis (00:30):

We have had a busy couple of weeks. It's been good and interesting.

(00:36):

Today we're going to talk about R2A's preferred due diligence approach. We often get asked why we do things a certain way and we've covered in another podcast, I believe, the different tools and techniques that are out there and that there's many tools and techniques out there. And one of the first things that you've got to do is select what you're going to use.

Richard Robinson (00:56):

Which of the approaches you're going to use out of the eight by three matrix that we suggest is available to you (refer R2A texts).

Gaye Francis (01:02):

That's correct. So part of today's podcast has been recorded because we've been congratulated, which you don't often expect as consulting engineers to be congratulated on doing a job well done. It's just I guess what you expect when you get paid to do something. But we've had a number of stakeholders come up to us after workshops and say: That was a really good process, I really understand what we are doing now. So we thought we'd go through the approach that R2A uses.

Richard Robinson (01:30):

And anybody lives on the 65th floor who thinks that, yes, it's kind of interesting, isn't it?

Gaye Francis (01:39):

So do you want to kick off and I'll throw some comments in?

Richard Robinson (01:42):

Yeah, by all means! So what we thought we'd do was actually just explain which approach we prefer to start with.

(01:48):

Now what we tend to do is start with this one, and if it doesn't work, then we go scratching around looking for other ones. I mean, for example, in three by eight matrix, the legal review, we always suggest that ought to be done, but we don't start with the legal review. That's something that once you've gone through your process, you get the lawyers to actually check. And it actually is quite important because Gaye has talked about this and she keeps forgetting the line. I keep making the (Immanuel) Kant remark that engineers seem to like: The meanings in the process, the results are only consequences. So whatever analysis or review process you adopt that will define the consequences.

Gaye Francis (02:25):

There are types of results that you're going to get from.

Richard Robinson (02:28):

And we keep coming across people who started with bottom up processes and they wonder why they get lost in detail and floundering around. And I've got to say that's the reason why we actually get quite a lot of work is because they've been floundering around for quite some time and they're rather desperately looking for somebody to sort of cut through the Gordian knot and bring in the thing to a useful place.

Gaye Francis (02:44):

And resolve the situation, isn't it, that they can make a decision going forward?

Richard Robinson (02:48):

Correct. So we just thought we'd say, well, okay, this is the approach we normally take.

(02:53):

Now we always start top down and the only really effective top down approach that we know about is the military intelligence, threat and vulnerability technique. That's where you spell out what you're trying to protect, what's important to you, what the credible threats to what it is you're trying to protect are. And then you look to see whether those threats expose what you're trying to achieve or protect. And if you find one of those, that's called a vulnerability just for the record. I mean Asia for example, does threat assessments. They don't do hazard assessments. That's what organisations and bottom up tends to do hazard assessments.

Gaye Francis (03:27):

But there's a whole lot of ways that you can do the threat and vulnerability assessments. So sometimes we look at critically exposed groups.

Richard Robinson (03:33):

Which we did for tunnel and fire design.

Gaye Francis (03:36):

You can look at it on a functional basis.

Richard Robinson (03:38):

Which we did for safety cases for ports like Sydney and Sydney Harbour and other places.

Gaye Francis (03:43):

Which comes in as a geographic basis as well. And then you can do other completeness checks for railways, for example. You can do the different train types, different collision types, different track types. So there's a whole lot of ways that you can get...

Richard Robinson (03:57):

The last job we were just doing was done by task.

Gaye Francis (04:00):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (04:02):

We went through and broke down the tasks. We then also came back and double checked against critical exposed group, make sure we didn't have overlook anything. But that means we took two cuts through at a high level. And I think that's the point. One of the points we keep making; risk is this multidimensional creature. If you think a single cut is going to get you the answer that you want, it's probably not the case. I mean, we always suggest you have the lawyers review it, come hell or high water anyway, because it's got to work for the lawyers because if you don't, it won't survive post legal scrutiny.

Gaye Francis (04:30):

But I think one of the interesting things with the job that we just did when we did look at the tasks that were being done, there are a whole lot of controls that came out of that. But then when we went through the critically exposed groups, there were some additional controls. So I think sometimes you do have to have that, because it is multidimensional, you've got to have a number of ways of looking at it and checking it to make sure that you haven't overlooked anything. And that's one of the ways that you do do your completeness check.

Richard Robinson (04:56):

Now having done that though, when we're looking at a particular vulnerability, the way we tend to like to do that is just to write out a single line threat barrier diagram. Now that's a very Newtonian way of thinking about things. If this then that time goes on and flows in one direction, there's no quantum mechanics, it's just a single flow of ideas. And that's certainly what we used in the VCAT proposal and certainly what we used in the last two reports that we've done. And the reason why we particularly like using this, from the point of view we explain in the hierarchy controls, it's one of the really crisp ways to present the elimination option always comes first. If you can't eliminate, then you say, okay, can we prevent it from occurring? If you can't prevent it from occurring, you say, right, can we mitigate the scale of the consequences? We prefer that to multi bow ties, motor alarm bow ties, because everybody gets lost.

Gaye Francis (05:49):

And I think we've been using it more to get everybody on the same page and to almost set the context of the review. We don't often use them as an analysis tool. They're often as a communicational explanatory tool. So it gets everybody on the same page that focuses them on the key issue of concern. These are the controls that we've got in place. These are the possible additional controls you could have. And then you may or may not need to go to another level of detail to determine what's reasonable or not.

Richard Robinson (06:19):

And just remember whilst we start that way, it isn't always the way. I mean, for example, we're doing that Supreme Court expert witness job on the effect of rolling blackouts. And we started off trying to use threat barrier diagrams to describe all the scenarios that we could think of. And in the end, you actually couldn't do it. We had to actually go to a probabilistic basis, an epidemiological basis rather than a causal Newtonian basis.

Gaye Francis (06:45):

And that was because there wasn't just a single cause associated with it.

Richard Robinson (06:48):

Well, there was a single cause, but the mechanisms were so varied. So people were getting trapped in elevators, blood blanks freezing over, trains stopping in tunnels, and all sorts of complexities. But there's a whole multitude... And all the traffic lights going out tends to cause a bit of chaos too.

Gaye Francis (07:04):

It sort of sets the context for the review as well. When you're determining what's reasonable.

Richard Robinson (07:09):

Now, when we're actually look at the threat barrier diagrams, the other thing that we do, and we've just been commissioned to do another major review - This one's an international one, just! - but what we then do is when you're looking at the particular barrier in the threat barrier diagram and saying how reliable is that barrier? In terms of trying to explain it to somebody, the best tool we've found to use it is reliability block diagrams or success block diagrams. So the success block diagrams describes what elements provide success for that particular barrier. Now, the advantage of doing that is that the threat barrier diagram then remains fairly uncomplicated because just whack in what that functional barrier is, and then you explain in the reliability block diagram all the elements and what needs to achieve.

Gaye Francis (07:52):

I think one of the interesting things with that as well is it often shows the weakest link in the chain and it's often not the one that you're focusing on. And so it's no use putting in another barrier that's really, really reliable and gold plating something if you've got another barrier in there or another element in there that's actually limiting the success of that whole chain.

Richard Robinson (08:18):

If you've got a single point of failure, it's always going to cost you mega dollars to gold plate it, and that single point of failure will not go away.

Gaye Francis (08:26):

And I think that was one of the things that came up in the recent jobs, wasn't it? They were focusing on a particular issue of concern. And when we went down to that, and we did need to go back down to that reliability block diagram level, the issue that they were trying to resolve the solution was totally different to the original one that they were looking at.

Richard Robinson (08:45):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (08:45):

Just to address that common mode failure, because if they didn't address that common mode failure, whatever they were talking about doing would've had immaterial impact.

Richard Robinson (08:56):

The other key point in all this, which I think is actually really important, I suspect that's one of the reasons why we keep getting a job out of all this, is that the whole point of the WHS Legislation (OHS Act) going back from Maxwell QC when he wrote his thing, was that one of the core frustrations of the health and safety business was that people had split responsibilities. And the fact that somebody over here failed to do something, the people were saying: Well, it's not my job, it's their job to get it right. And he said: Well, no, that's not right, to the extent that you have to control, you've got to do stuff and you can't just keep blaming the other person and not doing anything, you've got to get on with it. So in both the last couple of jobs, there's been a tendency for somebody to say: Well, this is the responsibility of, say a fire engineer and you, the fire engineer, have to sign off on the problem; it's all your problem, the rest of us just sit back and wait until you figure it out and sign off.

Gaye Francis (09:46):

And the poor fire engineer says: No, no, no!

Richard Robinson (09:49):

I'd sooner withdraw from the job. I'm not taking responsibility for everything that could go wrong. Mainly because you people want to have some other solution which provides operational benefits, but you're not willing to take into account these serious long-term consequences of that fire design. Which by the way, as the fire engineer, I inherit for the rest of my working life. So it's actually quite interesting and it's rather interesting from my point of view -- I obviously started life as a fire engineer with Faction Mutual, and I guess I was doing this before it was trendy, but I moved on to being a due diligence engineer. But when you put the due diligence context together, the fire engineer is particularly pleased to say: That makes sense! I'm with you.

Gaye Francis (10:31):

I think that's one of the other benefits of the due diligence approach that we do. I mean, we said this on a number of occasions, the tasks that we usually complete are generative interviews to come to get a first cut of the situation before you go into a stakeholder workshop. You never go into a stakeholder workshop unprepared or with a blank piece of paper. That could always lead to disaster. But I think one of the things that the due diligence approach does, and there's been multiple stakeholders in the last few jobs that we've worked on.

Richard Robinson (11:01):

Multiple multiples.

Gaye Francis (11:02):

And they've often been doing their things in their own little silos. And this is the first approach that's brought them all together to bring them onto the same page. And so I think collectively, they could then go forward. Whereas when you're trying to solve it in your own silo, it's almost impossible.

Richard Robinson (11:21):

Well, that's what the case is. And what happens is you get these huge delays and after a while the delays get so large that the whole process stalls. But you might remember, we noticed this when we were doing the Gold Coast, the Tugan bypass, the tunnel under the Gold Coast airport. You remember we had that workshop, and I thought it was pretty tough because the Queenslanders were fundamentally paying for it, but it went under the Gold Coast airport. So that means it had the federals in there, and it then sort of popped out in New South Wales. But the New South Wales regulators were giving everybody hell. And nobody would agree. And it wasn't until we ran that last workshop. We did not previously prepare for that one that, well, I recall.

Gaye Francis (11:58):

No, we had about 54 stakeholders across all of the jurisdictions. So it was a pretty exciting time.

Richard Robinson (12:05):

Absolutely. And yet we managed to land it. Now, what I also understood about that, it wasn't so much that our process per se was the most brilliant on the day, but the process of getting the right people in the room and taking it through a structured process does work.

Gaye Francis (12:20):

Yes. Yeah. So any last comments? So that's what we thought we'd share with you today. I hope you found it interesting. Again, not a single size fits everyone.

Richard Robinson (12:32):

Well, you might recall we were doing that Warragamba Dam upgrade. Remember how we started the process and it didn't go well, and at lunchtime we had a sudden... We need another approach here! And we found a way forward that we could land it through the group.

Gaye Francis (12:49):

I would've preferred to end on our successful jobs that we've used, our preferred process. But yes, I guess it just shows...

Richard Robinson (12:55):

<laughs> My point being that you can't just assume it's going to work every time.

Gaye Francis (12:59):

That is true. And you have to have enough tools and techniques up your sleeve that you can adapt if you need to on the day. But preparation, preparation, I'm all for that.

(13:09):

So thank you for joining us and we hope for you to listen next time. Thanks.

Richard Robinson (13:14):

Thanks.

Design trumps Risk Assessment - R2A’s VCAT Hearing Success (as Expert Witnesses)

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance
Season 3, Episode 2

In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss their recent success (as Expert Witnesses) at VCAT (Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal) and how design trumps risk assessment. 

They discuss their case involving an application for a building permit in the outer safety zone of a major hazard facility. WorkCover advised against building two new dwellings due to increased population and societal risk. However, Richard and Gaye, as expert witnesses, argued that proper safety and design measures, such as laminated windows and steel roofs, could mitigate the risks. 

The VCAT decision supports R2A’s position, and emphasises the importance of, working out the credible worst-case scenarios and then designing for it. 

You can listen further about this VCAT hearing in Season 2 episodes 1 & 2.

Read the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:01):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss their recent success at VCAT (Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal) and how design trumps risk assessment. We hope you enjoy the episode. Please give us a rating if you do also subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

Gaye Francis (00:26):

Hi Richard, welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:28):

Hello Gaye. Good to see you again.

Gaye Francis (00:30):

Good to see you. We do see each other often.

(00:34):

Today we're going to talk about our VCAT success and our safety and design issue, again. We have covered this a number of times in a couple of other episodes, particularly in season two, which we did in episode 1 of season two, which is callled "Safety and Design, and then episode 2 of the season 2, we discussed "The Demise of ALARP in Major Hazards". We have finally got an outcome from VCAT that we were expert witnesses for and it was in our favour, which was a part of surprise, I think?

Richard Robinson (01:11):

I'm not sure about that. I mean, I think from our point it was the only logical outcome, but it's very encouraging for the legal system to support that position.

Gaye Francis (01:20):

But it was against other decisions... the decision that Member Whitney made was different... she came to a different conclusion than other VCAT.

Richard Robinson (01:31):

Correct. She had to roll the system and she had to make particularly clear that she'd done it in the way that if somebody appealed to the Supreme Court, it would be likely to survive the experience. But that's what competent members do.

(01:46):

Now, just for the record, if anybody's interested, the decision, date of the order is 12th of March, 2024. The citation is Nasralla v Hobsons Bay City Council [2024] VCAT 212. That's if you want to look it up because all this information's available publicly and so you can go and look it up if you wish.

(02:09):

It's actually an 88 page decision, which for VCAT is a true monster, and about two thirds of it is to do with planning law and the application of the way in which the major hazards advice and how it was represented and so forth was put forward.

Gaye Francis (02:23):

Just before you go on, it's probably worth just giving a quick summary of what the case was. So it was the application for a building permit to provide two new dwellings on a piece of land that only currently had one old house on it. So it was to upgrade that to two new dwellings. However, it was in the outer safety zone of a major hazard facility in the Hobson Bay area (in Victoria, Australia). And so it did have a formal planning overlay on it, but WorkCover, not as a responsible authority but as an advisory authority, went against building the two dwellings. And that was (because) it increased the population at that site.

Richard Robinson (03:07):

So it was a societal risk argument, but the current house normally would have four persons present in it and all other things being equal, if you build two houses, you'd have eight persons present and presumably if you didn't do anything, they'd be subject to the equivalent level of risk, which means there'd be eight people at risk rather than four people at risk. And that was the advice from major hazards.

(03:26):

Now, the trick about major hazards was, I remember, previously they used to do it on a target level of risk basis, like the likelihood of killing a single person on one by 10 to the minus seven per annum and then plotted a risk curve. And this area, this region used to be beyond that boundary. And so the business for knocking down an old house and putting up two units or two houses was a very popular activity. And indeed the blocks on either side of this particular house had just that done to it. So it wasn't as though the young people who were developing the site were doing anything new or novel. And what was particularly grueling for them was that they'd gone through the whole planning process and then as the last gasp, the council had written to major hazards and major hazards had changed their planning or advice. And so rather than doing on the individual risk contour had said it's a credible worst case scenario, it's basically a kilometer away from this site if you're in there, no go.

Gaye Francis (04:21):

Yeah. So they changed it to consequence basis, which we've discussed in previous podcasts.

Richard Robinson (04:28):

Now, as I said, it was an 88 page decision and took six months and we were a little bit puzzled as to why it was taking so long. But when we looked at the comprehensive nature of the decision, it became pretty clear why the member had done it that way because she was trying to cover all bases and prevent any further things, issues coming back, particularly in appeal to the Supreme Court.

(04:49):

Now, as I mentioned earlier, about two thirds of the judgment was to do with planning matters and it's probably a more comprehensive view of planning matters. Now we're obviously not lawyers and we're certainly not comprehensive in planning law, but from our reading of it, and if anybody's interested in that application of planning law in Victoria, it's one of the more comprehensive ones that I've seen.

(05:12):

It also included a thing to do with the appeal to governor and council, which was, I have to say, completely new to us because I'd never seen that one before. And that seems to be because if you're dealing with somebody having to appeal to Supreme Court, that's a pretty expensive thing. And so in the case of hardship or something like that was involved and there was a general policy issue involved, which is the case in this situation -- other people had had houses rejected and other people had had houses approved depending on the whim of the previous different members making decisions. It had to be that comprehensive.

(05:47):

Now, what particularly pleased us was the core decision, which I got to say from our point of view as well, is the last 20% because there were a number of appendices in the decision as well, was that WorkSafe had gone for consequence. They'd said there's an inner safety area and an outer safety area, which was I think was...

Gaye Francis (06:06):

300 meters and a kilometer.

Richard Robinson (06:09):

This building was inside the outer safety area, but not inner safety area. And after an awful lot of yelling and screaming with the regulator and the major hazard facility concerned, everybody agreed that the credible worst case in that outer safety area was broken windows, which is in the safety case summary from 2018, basically from overpressures and things like that. There was no suggestion that there would be missiles coming out of the plant that could get that far or any of those sorts of things.

(06:40):

Now, what slightly confused us was that nowhere in all this had anybody considered safety and design to deal with what was now a known credible consequence driven hazard. And the core issues from our viewpoint where if you're inside the house and an explosion overpressure comes your way, if the windows blow in and it turns into shrapnel, and this is a well-known terrorist modus operandi, you could get impaled and the correct way to design against that is to put laminated windows in there. And one of our associates in New Zealand, Dr. Frank Stocks, was busily designing the new Auckland Airport. And amongst other things, he was fretting about people leaving explosives around and they were busily putting laminated windows around the place to deal with that hazard. So this is a recognized good practice, although I've got to say it's not anywhere in any particular standard per se, although that's not true for high explosion major facilities.

Gaye Francis (07:34):

But not for domestic purposes.

Richard Robinson (07:37):

That's correct.

(07:38):

And the other hazard, which we were concerned about was that if you put a tile roof in the area and you have an explosion overpressure coming your way, tiles and things sitting on top, gargoyles, whatever attractive thing you want to put on your roof, get knocked off and then these things fall to the ground and can obviously hit people on the ground and around them. And we said tin roofs or steel roofs, colorbond roofs, are a better way from a design viewpoint. And if you did both these things...

Gaye Francis (08:04):

then that would address the two hazards.

Richard Robinson (08:06):

Yeah, the credible critical consequences. And in any event, the event would be rare because that's the whole point of the major hazard safety case regime and nobody's in any doubt about its rarity. So that part wasn't a question. And if you did these things, it wouldn't actually provide the design. Now, what was really odd from our point of view is when we reviewed the plans, it looked like they had almost designed for this particular hazard, even though at the time...

Gaye Francis (08:31):

it hadn't been on the radar.

Richard Robinson (08:32):

It hadn't been on the radar, because it had a steel roof. I mean, if you're against big hailstones breaking tile roofs up, a steel roof is a much superior way to go.

Gaye Francis (08:41):

And I think that's modern design anyway. There's not many houses that design with, well, not in our (Melbourne suburban)area anyway that have...

Richard Robinson (08:48):

Well, it's normally more economic to put a steel roof on, colorbond, and that was already specified. Whilst it wasn't on the plan, shown on the plans, the advice from the owners, the Nasrallas, was that the architect advising had already said we planned to put laminate on the windows, but that was from thermal (perspective) it wasn't on the plans...

Gaye Francis (09:09):

It was an efficiency, heat efficiency viewpoint.

Richard Robinson (09:12):

So that was going to be there anyway. And then when we looked at the plans and completely to our surprise on the second floor, the only place where there might've been a window facing the plant, which where you get the reflective wave and the greater pressure, there was no window there, it was just a blank wall. And if I've been asked to design a building to deal with that pressure wave, that's what you would've done. We were obviously quite surprised by this and we could sort of just say, look, if you were going to design for the hazard as spelt out by the major hazard facility as certified in effect by the major hazards, these are the controls you put in place. And they were already there.

(09:53):

And after the 88 pages, Member Whitney said, I agree. And didn't even require the planning permit to be changed beyond that which had already been agreed to by the council since all those controls that we would have expected to be in place had already been agreed to be there.

(10:13):

Now the reason why this is so important, and Gaye's just nodding her head wisely over there, is because the business of working out what the credible worst case concept is and then designing for it is clearly, according to VCAT, the way forward.

Gaye Francis (10:33):

And this would appear to be the first decision that's been made on that basis.

Richard Robinson (10:38):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (10:39):

So that makes it really interesting because that gives councils and organisations or councils that have major hazard facilities in their municipality, an additional tool that says: Well, we can actually design and have houses in these areas in these outer safety zones because there's precautions available to deal with them. So it's almost putting, and I don't know whether this exists formally, I don't think it does, it doesn't appear to be a major hazard overlay on any of the planning permits or planning procedures that we can see. But it's really interesting that some of these things haven't been put forward for new buildings and new dwellings in areas with major hazard facilities.

Richard Robinson (11:26):

And it's something we haven't understood. I mean, as we pointed out, in our opinion, it actually doesn't make much sense. Because if you're in a bushfire overlay, you have to design for bushfires. If you're in a earthquake zone, you have to design for earthquakes. If you've got a serious windstorm around, you have to design for windstorm. What you have to do is design for whatever location you find yourself. And that's something which we hammer in our texts and everything else that, I mean, if you live near a major hazard facility, you've got to take it into account that's just obvious. And the closer you are, the more you've got a design for it. And so the example we give, if you're immediately adjacent to it, you might wind up in an underground, reinforced conquering bunker with its own air supply without a view or anything. It'll be fiendishly the expensive and one would imagine you wouldn't want to live there. But it would be safe.

Gaye Francis (12:14):

So there's things that you can do. So the safety and design element, and I think just from a town planning viewpoint, all of those things hadn't been taken into account. Now, I don't know whether there's not the expertise in council to deal with these things or engineering designs to be able to bring that into it.

Richard Robinson (12:31):

Councils have been pretty much de-engineered in the last 20 or 30 years.

Gaye Francis (12:35):

But we were the only technical people involved in this particular case.

Richard Robinson (12:39):

Yeah, and that was a bit of a surprise to me too because there was no expert witness.

Gaye Francis (12:43):

For the council.

Richard Robinson (12:45):

Or for the major has facility or for that matter major hazards. The only people that actually turned up were people representing the legal aspects.

Gaye Francis (12:54):

And the policy position.

Richard Robinson (12:55):

And legal policy aspects. So overall, I mean there's some larger issues and probably the subject of another podcast, which could be sort of talked about here, I suppose the one that puzzled me the most in which we hammered in there significantly... You see what frustrated us if you didn't improve the design at all and just left the existing house there, the four people living in the existing house were subject to broken windows and bits being blown off the roof, i.e. relatively, they were in a more dangerous situation than the eight people in the new houses that were designed for that hazard. And so it was lower risk to develop than not to develop.

Gaye Francis (13:35):

So from our viewpoint, you're potentially setting people up for a fall by not approving improvements.

Richard Robinson (13:43):

Well, that's correct. And that's not in the council's interest, it's not in the people who live there's interests and it's not in the interest of the major hazards facility. So how that situation could arise in the first place is something that we just didn't get.

Gaye Francis (13:54):

So from our viewpoint, I think it was a pretty straightforward decision and the solution was very, very obvious. But it was a very lengthy and difficult complex process to go through to get two new dwellings approved.

Richard Robinson (14:12):

Well, yes, that's right. Although I have to say part of it's we started online and when we actually went to the VCAT hearing in person, I think that did bring things to a head and get everything functioning a lot faster.

Gaye Francis (14:25):

So I think we are pretty chuffed with ourselves that we got a good result for the Nasrallas and safety and design was the way to go.

Richard Robinson (14:39):

Well the other interesting thing was that there had been a number of appeals to the Supreme Court on this whole matter and the way it should be done. And the Member Whitney is obviously very much aware of that and actually tried to address all those cases because she lists all the previous cases that might be the case. And we know one of them, which we've be doing for another client, that had gone to Supreme Court has been sent back to VCAT, <still outstanding> our imagines that this decision may influence those further outcomes, but that remains to be seen.

Gaye Francis (15:07):

Alright, thanks for joining us today and we'll see you next time.

Richard Robinson (15:11):

Thanks.

Design Analysis not Risk Analysis

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 3, Episode 1

In this episode, Richard and Gaye discuss the topic of design analysis versus risk analysis. They explore the difference between ALARP (as low as reasonably practicable) and SFAIRP (so far as reasonably practicable) and how the interpretation of these concepts has caused confusion and problems in various industries. 

They also discuss the importance of safety in design and the need for a retrospective design review to ensure that all reasonable practical precautions are in place. The conversation also touches on the role of AI in consequence modelling and design review, as well as the need for quality assurance and independent checks in governance processes. 

The episode concludes with a reminder that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to risk analysis and that different tools and techniques can provide different insights into due diligence issues.

You can read the episode’s full transcript below.

Episode transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to season three of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the topic of design analysis rather than risk analysis. We hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, please give us a rating. Also, don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform.

Gaye Francis (00:27):

Welcome Richard, we're back for Season 3 of our podcast.

Richard Robinson (00:31):

Yes, and as we were just talking, Gaye had an excellent holiday in Finland with the family.

Gaye Francis (00:35):

I did! Had to do due diligence a couple of times with managing kids, but we made it safely and had a good time.

Richard Robinson (00:44):

And since then, you're able to go on more business trips because the kids are so well accepting of your traveling needs.

Gaye Francis (00:50):

My traveling needs. That's correct. Just a little aside there!

(00:55):

Welcome back, as we said, to Season 3. Today we're going to talk about design analysis rather than risk analysis, and the need to demonstrate SFAIRP (so far as reasonably practicable) is really a design exercise.

Richard Robinson (01:12):

Yeah. In part this arose because there's been some interesting discussion if there's really a difference between ALARP and SFAIRP. And I suppose we were sort of completely mystified by the whole discussion because, from our viewpoint, ALARP should never have existed. And the way it got interpreted has caused an awful lot of grief in an awful lot of places for an awful lot of people.

(01:29):

But when we were just fiddling around with it, I think it partly irritated me because I've sort of said a lot of things in different ways and I've understood what the different points were. For example, consequence modeling, that's things that go 'pop' and 'bang' and overpressures and things like that, is a very scientific area of activity. And consequence modeling to me was always fully scientific. What always was clear to me is that risk analysis per se, which is a simultaneous appreciation of likeliness consequence was always a very muddly subject and everybody always got confused.

(01:58):

Now, I just did sort of an exercise out of a curiosity because all this ALARP (vs) SFAIRP business reappeared, I sort of actually went and looked back at Sir Frank Layfield's review of the Sizewell B power station, which is where he had a problem because whether or not they were going to approve the new nuclear power station, which was a fairly complicated idea in the UK, and he had a lot of engineers advising him and he was a lawyer. And one of the things that sort of became clear is that when you look at nuclear radiation levels, you had to decide what was harmful or not harmful and what was reasonable. And so the recommendation that came out of his thing is that somebody should do a review of this. Now that sort of ultimately sort of floated over to the then what was the new UK Health and Safety Executive, and when you look at the people who put the tolerability risk of nuclear power stations together, they were mostly scientists talking about radiation and they were the people who dreamed up this whole ALARP business.

Gaye Francis (02:52):

So they were actually looking at the level of radiation that could be acceptable, in quotation commas, "to humans".

Richard Robinson (02:59):

But what was interesting about that, that so-called dagger diagram never had any numbers in that document, but what they did do was put in the appendice what acceptable or tolerable levels of risk in different industries otherwise were: Car industries about 10 to minus four per annum for a single fatality; and lightning strikes and so forth was about 1 x 10 to minus six or 10 to seven. Now, they didn't necessarily recommend putting those numbers onto their dagger diagram, but that's what everybody in the petrochemical business, in particular, and the land use planning guys in major hazard facilities did for the next 20 years.

Gaye Francis (03:35):

They equated the two (ALARP & SFAIRP).

Richard Robinson (03:36):

They equated the two. And then I realised well the engineers doing Sizewell B and giving advice to lawyers were very careful. And even the scientists when they were putting in the risk level, left it all in the appendix. It was other people that stuck the two together. And that's in fact where the difficulty arose. Now that sort of caused me a reflection in which irritated me because I've thought about this for a long time and trying to put models together and so forth. I mean, one of the things we had realised for example, was that because we had David Howarth the professor of law and public policy out we sponsored into Melbourne in 2017, and the reason why we were interested in him because he had that book "Law as Engineering". And what he was pointing out is that the lawyers, particularly international UK and US lawyers, were consciously studying the design activities of engineers on the basis that the lawyers do the same as engineers. If somebody client turns up says, I got a problem or I want to do something, then in the circumstances what are the options and which is the best for the client? Now that's a design exercise. And I suddenly realised safety in design, well, that's a design exercise. That's the point. Consequence modeling is scientific, which drives the criticality analysis decision. And what the courts actually do post-event, it's not the level of risk that counts, it's a retrospective design review.

Gaye Francis (04:55):

To make sure that all reasonable practicable precautions were in place.

Richard Robinson (04:58):

Now if you look at it like that, you do consequences now just to work out what the critical things are, that is very scientific. And then you do safety and design to manage that consequence. And then if it all goes wrong post-event, you do a retrospective design review, which is what the lawyers are deliberately studying the engineers for. That's what David Howarth's point was. Now that has a couple of interesting little flow-ons because the consequence analysis, which I've always understood was scientific. You've listened to me ramble on about that for 10 years!

Gaye Francis (05:32):

A few more probably!

Richard Robinson (05:34):

Because basically we decided to stay away from major hazards because they were doing risk analysis, not consequence analysis, in the first instance, and therefore weren't demonstrating all reasonable practicable precautions were in place.

Gaye Francis (05:43):

I think just before you go on there, it's just important to know, that we've covered this in another podcast, that major hazards have gone to consequence modeling and consequence analysis primarily now.

Richard Robinson (05:54):

At least in Victoria. That's correct. I'm not aware of any other state doing it yet. And we did suggest that Engineers Australia in their role as the intellectual body of engineers should actually get their act together on this one lickity split, but that's another matter. But what was interesting about this was, you see the business of science is to know about things. So this is not an attack on scientists in any way because the better scientists know, the better engineers can do. That's the whole point of the exercise.

Gaye Francis (06:23):

The better you're able to design for those things.

Richard Robinson (06:25):

That's correct. And then the lawyers have decided they're going to consider what the engineers are doing and do design reviews of, at least, what the engineers have designed. That means there's a remarkable alignment going on. I mean obviously there's a bit of a flow between the scientists and the engineers because sometimes engineers turn more into scientists and vice versa about what can be done.

Gaye Francis (06:48):

And I think that process is a bit more back and forth, isn't it? But if you focus on the credible critical issues, that's sort of where you can get your design the most robust and it usually then designs for the lesser issues as well.

Richard Robinson (07:02):

Correct. And the other reason why this is actually important, all of a sudden it puts the responsibility of the respective parties in the right place because the scientists -- it is important they keep figuring out how the world behaves, how a gas cloud under certain circumstances will behave and all the modeling things that they wish to do -- but it's the engineer's responsibility to make sure that every reasonable practical control is in place to deal with that credible critical issue. And then it's the lawyer's responsibility to retrospectively test that understanding, because in an advanced industrial society, we do create the most enormous hazards. And when you think of where AI's going, I mean that's what they're actually talking about now. Because what an AI can do, it could do a much better job of the consequence modeling probably because it will take a whole lot of parameters into account. Will it do the design review? Now, that is an interesting question and I don't think people have thought about it because what the philosophical framework for that design and then the design review, that's never going to be the job of an AI. I would have thought.

Gaye Francis (08:04):

It's a really interesting question. I gave a board presentation last week and one of the board members asked, what's the role of AI and how as a board do we demonstrate due diligence around it? And I think it's going to go more as a governance and boards and things like that are going to have a responsibility to test the AI where it's going to be used. And I don't know that we can use it for safety critical things yet, but that's just sort of an opinion. I don't know how you put a quality assurance system around it to make sure that it is? But there's going to be some interesting questions around that and quality assurance and how boards govern AI going forward.

Richard Robinson (08:46):

Well, it fascinated me because remember the first, pretty much one of the first jobs you got with R2A as a young engineer was doing the SIL study, the safety integrity study on how two trains would get past each other on a single line track in New South Wales.

Gaye Francis (09:00):

Correct.

Richard Robinson (09:00):

And you had the job of basically testing every track, every intersection, every points and testing to see whether the watchdog that was being created would actually...

Gaye Francis (09:09):

Bark... Or bring up that the hazard existed.

Richard Robinson (09:15):

That's the sort of task you'd think they'd probably throw an AI. But are you going to trust an AI to make sure that every possible configuration is tested or are you going to choose a Gaye to do it in the future?

Gaye Francis (09:28):

<laughs> Well, I think that's where quality assurance comes in, doesn't it, Richard? Because you're going to have to have a confidence around the technology that you're going to use and the AI and the information that it gives out. You're going to have to test it in some way as part of your due diligence process to make sure that you've got confidence in the information that it's delivering to you.

Richard Robinson (09:46):

Well, you might remember my then business partner, Kevin, basically what he had to do... He worked out a process to make sure that none of the collisions or head-ons - all the train collisions - could occur. And then when the designer decided that was the way it was going to be designed, to use that test (they) had to dream up a different test in order to test whether or not what the designer put together...

Gaye Francis (10:12):

Actually worked.

Richard Robinson (10:13):

Actually worked. And so a different kind of risk model had to be put in place to examine what was being done by these large defense-based software players. And we had to dream up, well, Kevin was doing that part and I was doing the checking and you were doing the work as I recall.

Gaye Francis (10:31):

<laughs> But I think that's really interesting because I think those sort of things will require this independent check. And that's part of what, I guess, if you go back to our idea that the courts are testing after the event whether all reasonable practical precautions are in place, so that retrospective design review, they're looking for other tools and techniques to test the governance processes before the loss of control point in a way.

Richard Robinson (10:56):

Correct. So you need different ways of doing that. And I think we have talked about this in another podcast, but perhaps that's another one we should revisit? Particularly because, obviously from our point of view, the Victorian major hazard people have actually ditched what was the target level of risk ALARP process in favour of what we've always understood to be...

Gaye Francis (11:16):

So discounted the likelihood; they don't consider likelihood anymore. So it's consequence base. But we've said it in a number of our podcasts and we will continue to say there's a whole lot of tools and techniques out there that give you all different insights into risk issues or due diligence issues. It's not a one size fits all, it's that you have to think these things through and you will get different insight depending on what you use. So I think that's one of the key things that we would say is your retrospective design review, think about the questions that a lawyer might ask you in the event that an incident happens. And have you demonstrated due diligence?

Richard Robinson (11:58):

Yes. Well, I did observe I've worn my glasses today, so as I commented to Gaye earlier, she's actually been in focus for the entire session, which is nice.

Gaye Francis (12:06):

I hope my words as well as your vision! <laughs>

(12:09):

Alright, I think on that note, we might wrap podcast number one for season three here. Thank you for joining us and hope you can join us next time. Thank you.

Richard Robinson (12:19):

Thank you.