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

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

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

If you’d like to learn more about R2A and Richard and Gaye’s work, head to www.r2a.com.au.

This episode also touches on Apto PPE, Gaye’s women’s and maternity PPE range which you can find out more about at www.aptoppe.com.au

Transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

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

Gaye Francis (00:40):

Hi Richard. Welcome back for another podcast episode.

Richard Robinson (00:44):

Good to be here Gaye. Always entertaining!

Gaye Francis (00:46):

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

Richard Robinson (02:11):

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

Gaye Francis (02:53):

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

Richard Robinson (03:17):

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

Gaye Francis (03:48):

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

(04:03):

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

Richard Robinson (04:25):

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

Gaye Francis (05:05):

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

Richard Robinson (05:45):

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

Gaye Francis (05:49):

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

Richard Robinson (06:03):

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

Gaye Francis (06:16):

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

Richard Robinson (06:28):

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

(06:32):

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

(07:10):

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

Gaye Francis (07:40):

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

Richard Robinson (07:53):

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

(08:03):

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

Gaye Francis (08:24):

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

Richard Robinson (08:31):

Yes. Right!

Gaye Francis (08:31):

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

Richard Robinson (09:02):

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

Gaye Francis (09:17):

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

Richard Robinson (09:35):

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

Gaye Francis (10:35):

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

Richard Robinson (10:58):

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

Gaye Francis (11:06):

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

Richard Robinson (11:17):

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

Gaye Francis (11:46):

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

Richard Robinson (11:53):

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

Gaye Francis (12:01):

We'll help facilitate the process.

Richard Robinson (12:04):

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

Gaye Francis (12:12):

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

Richard Robinson (12:21):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (12:22):

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