Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Podcast
Season 8, Episode 10
In this last episode of Season 8 of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis wrap up the season’s overall theme of Criticality and Control.
They look at what engineers should do when internal standards, design duties under WHS legislation and the safest outcome for a project point in different directions. Drawing on two dangerous goods and tunnel projects, they show why each job needs to be assessed on its own merits, and why a relative risk argument backed by additional controls can sometimes support a different answer than the Standard of the day. They also cover how Standards lag behind technology and business changes, and why a documented due diligence process matters as much as the outcome.
If you’d like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we’d love to hear from you.
Timestamps
00:40 – Season 8 recap: ten episodes
01:41 – 7,500 downloads milestone
03:03 – Dangerous goods and tunnels
05:45 – Relative risk and additional controls
06:54 – Internal standards versus designer duties
08:23 – Why Standards lag
10:02 – Due diligence as governance
10:41 – Criticality and control wrap-up
Episode transcript
Megan (Producer) (00:00):
Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this last episode of Season 8, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis wrap up the season's overall theme of Criticality and Control.
(00:15):
We hope you enjoy their discussion. If you do, please support our work by giving us a rating and subscribing on your favourite podcast platform. And if you'd like more information on R2A, our newsletter and resources, or have any feedback or topic ideas, head to the website, www.r2a.com.au.
Gaye Francis (00:34):
Welcome Richard to the season wrap of season eight.
Richard Robinson (00:37):
Hello award-winning Gaye. It's good to be here.
Gaye Francis (00:40):
<laughs> Thanks, Richard. The blush on my cheeks again. It seems to have been a very quick season this season, but we have covered 10 episodes. So putting my glasses on like I did during my speech so I could read my writing. We've covered the pink elephant syndrome where we talked about: "What risks are you talking about? We're keeping them all away. We must be doing a good job." The elimination has its own hierarchic control. An update to the New Zealand Health and Safety at Work Act. And these are in no particular order because I don't think we've released them in this way. Proactive versus reactive due diligence. Hazard and risk versus threat and vulnerability, top down, bottom up - of course. Where AI can be used in the WHS space. Co-operative versus competition policies in project risks. Culture criticality and control. And risk uncertainty and hallucinations.
(01:41):
So I think we've covered a lot and it's all been brought back to the theme of this season's podcast, which was criticality and control. I think just a shout out, we actually had the 7,500th download of episodes during this season, which is a pretty cool accomplishment. And some of the feedback we get is not only is it informative, it's also entertaining. <laughs>
Richard Robinson (02:07):
Yes. I didn't know that I consider ourselves to be that entertaining, but that's nice.
Gaye Francis (02:10):
That's true. So today we're going to sort of finish up with a wrap and talk about Standards, which we have visited on a number of occasions, but we give these courses for Engineers Australia. And some of the questions we get asked and how engineers resolve, not necessarily the conflict, but the competing obligations of complying with an organisation's own internal standards, their duties as a designer under the Work Health and Safety legislation and what they need to do to just get... Because most engineers like you and I just want to get on with the job and do the right thing, don't we? Do stuff. And trying to resolve these complexities with these sort of issues, it's not easy.
Richard Robinson (03:03):
No, and we sort of have a difficulty because we don't like naming particular jobs, but on the other hand, we thought we could talk about this in a more general sense. And this was particularly to do with the transport of dangerous goods and tunnels and cuttings and things like that. Now, as a general standard and proposition, you don't take dangerous goods through tunnels because if something goes wrong, particularly if you're dealing with explosive, obviously explosion is confined by the tunnel, in which case the consequence is worse. So you tend just not to do it. So the general rule is you ban the loads going through tunnels. Now there was a recent when we were asked to give some advice on a tender, but the basic design was for a tunnel and that actually punched a hole through where the tunnel was going to go to confirm ground conditions and things like that. Because if you're talking about uncertainties with tunnels, you will be well be aware we have a cabinet in confidence report, which we won't be talking about.
Gaye Francis (03:55):
I think there's been some difficulties with a number of tunnels around different locations in Australia.
Richard Robinson (04:01):
So we'll just leave that one well alone. But one of the things was that the various tenderers had the right to put in a non-competing bid. And I remember sort of doing the review and doing things. And we noticed that if you really wanted to get the dangerous goods out of the highway and out of the community, you wanted them on the freeway. And then the problem was you had to go through this tunnel, which is just something you don't do. And so in the end, the recommendation was that you put in a non-complying bid and go with a cutting. And that's what the successful tenderer actually did. Now, so far as we can tell, that's because of the rise of the WHS legislation. The WHS legislation puts a duty on designers and designers have to ensure that <they> eliminate hazards so far as reasonably practicable. And if you don't want to have a dangerous goods in a confined space, don't have a tunnel.
Gaye Francis (04:48):
Yeah.
Richard Robinson (04:48):
But that isn't always the case because on one particular...
Gaye Francis (04:53):
On another particular job.
Richard Robinson (04:54):
Which we did advice for, you had to take dangerous goods out from the port and the freeway they were building had a short length of tunnel involved. But the difficulty was the alternative to taking through the tunnel was to take it through the city with stoplights and right angled turns and high rise buildings. And you could show on a relative risk basis, it was smarter to take most of the dangerous goods, not all of them because explosives are a particular problem. If an explosion happens in a tunnel and it's got the confinement, you're stuck. But basically it was safer to take all dangerous goods except explosives through this very short tunnel, stick to the freeway and go through it. And that was the advice we gave. And I must say it did cause a lot of yelling and screaming at the time because on target level of risk basis, it didn't hit any targets. But that was the recommendation and that's what...
Gaye Francis (05:45):
On a relative risk basis. My recollection of that though is they had to put in additional controls to...
Richard Robinson (05:50):
Oh yes, you had to put in...
Gaye Francis (05:51):
To do that. So it was still a criticality and control type argument, but used on a relative risk basis to...
Richard Robinson (05:58):
Recharge foam system, containment for any spills and nobody was allowed to stop in the tunnel if they were on fire, even though that may well have been the safest place and safest thing to have done.
Gaye Francis (06:08):
Yeah. And I think that's one of our key things. And when we talk to clients and work on specific jobs or work on each job, each job has to be taken on its own merit in the context that it is, in the environment it is. And it has to be thought through, not necessarily from scratch because you can bring all of that previous information in, but it's not a cookie cutter solution.
Richard Robinson (06:33):
No. And sometimes to actually have the short tunnel from the point of view of the community as a whole, that was the safest option. Even though it possibly wasn't what the Standards might suggest or the rules of the day would suggest that you would do. In fact, it's totally contrary to what the Standard of the day said, but it was still the safest option in the circumstances.
Gaye Francis (06:54):
So I think these need to be thought through. And that was one of the questions we often get asked in a course. And yes, we were asked it again last week was there's an internal standard and as an employee, I need to comply with that standard. But as a designer, I might know that there's other things that could be done in addition to those. What do I do?
Richard Robinson (07:15):
Well, and that's difficulty engineers as designers actually have at the moment because unless you're the director, the due diligence obligation of the WHS legislation only apply to the officers. It doesn't apply to the person doing the job. You only have to demonstrate reasonable care. And if there's a company policy that's been endorsed by the board, they're the people who ultimately have the final responsibility. Your options, which happens all the time by the way, as designers, if you're confident that what the board has said isn't the best solution, that's one of them problems of being an employee engineer. The only option you've got is to resign.
Gaye Francis (07:51):
Well, you should bump those concerns up, I guess, first and say that there's alternates that could be done.
Richard Robinson (07:57):
We know a number of engineers who actually resigned because...
Gaye Francis (08:01):
They can't resolve it.
Richard Robinson (08:03):
They were put in, from their point of view, an impossible position. And it does seem to me that that is a very unfortunate outcome which has been happening. You may recall that rather large project in Victoria, the project manager wanted to do it our way and it was a criticality driven project. And when they wouldn't do it our way, he said, "If you're not going to hire these people, I can't do the job."
Gaye Francis (08:23):
Yeah. And it does make it hard because Standards, I mean, we've seen Standards being reviewed and they take considerable amount of time. They're often lagging indicators or lagging on the kind technologies.
Richard Robinson (08:36):
And some of these standards are just an international standard with IEC crossed out and AS put instead and it takes a whole year to get that way.
Gaye Francis (08:43):
But also sometimes the Standards aren't relevant because the business has changed as well that the Standard is actually no longer relevant to the circumstances that the organisation's in.
Richard Robinson (08:56):
And if you apply the wrong Standard in the wrong place, it's a very difficult...
Gaye Francis (09:02):
So we didn't quite have a crisp answer for this poor engineer that was at the course last week, but we understand the difficulties that engineers are being put in. There's a whole lot of competing requirements of them and for them to have to resolve that is very complex.
Richard Robinson (09:17):
Well, you might recall that job where we got invited because of the underwriter and the owner was having an argument. There are two sets of lawyers, two sets of fire engineers, and we sort of explained what the due diligence argument would be. And as it turned out, both the underwriter and the owner agreed that was a fair thing. And then the fire engineer came tearing up to us after and said, thank goodness for that because without that advice from the high level resolution, we were going to walk away from the job even though we wanted to do it. We couldn't figure out a way and we weren't going to take full responsibility as our PE, perhaps I may not put the letter on the end of it.
Gaye Francis (09:55):
Yep.
Richard Robinson (09:57):
We weren't going to take full responsibility for the whole decision making process, which truly wasn't ours.
Gaye Francis (10:02):
And I think that's another point about the due diligence stuff. It is a governance process.
Richard Robinson (10:06):
Correct.
Gaye Francis (10:07):
And it's about the process that you go through. So not only is it important to get an outcome that can sustain legal scrutiny in the event that something happens, but it's also the process that you've gone through. And I think we've talked about that in other podcasts about going through a diligent process that documents the decisions that were made, by whom, at the time, under what circumstances.
Richard Robinson (10:34):
So the organisation and the directors can demonstrate due diligence, but in a way that enables the technical people to design and make things happen.
Gaye Francis (10:41):
Yeah, I agree. So I think it's been a really interesting podcast season, Richard, and R2A's focus has always been on criticality and control. And I think that's becoming more critical as projects get larger and our environment is changing so quickly as well that what was done even 12 months ago or two years ago may not necessarily be relevant now.
Richard Robinson (11:08):
Correct.
Gaye Francis (11:10):
So thank you for joining us this season. We will be back for season nine. And so thank you everyone for listening. We do appreciate it. Thanks, Richard.
Richard Robinson (11:19):
Thanks Gaye and we look forward to your next award.
Gaye Francis (11:21):
Thanks, Richard. <laughs> Bye.