Safety in Design

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

The episode also discusses the importance of safety in design and how implementing safety in design measures in new developments near major hazard facilities can lead to a safer and more resilient community.

For more information on Richard & Gaye due diligence engineering www.r2a.com.au or for their women's & maternity workwear range www.aptoppe.com.au.

Transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:02):

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

(00:24):

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

Gaye Francis (00:37):

Hi Richard. Welcome to another podcast recording.

Richard Robinson (00:42):

Hi Gaye. It's good to be here.

Gaye Francis (00:44):

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

Richard Robinson (00:52):

Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Gaye Francis (00:54):

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

Richard Robinson (01:44):

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

Gaye Francis (01:55):

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

Richard Robinson (02:17):

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

(02:52):

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

(03:12):

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

(03:29):

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

Gaye Francis (03:56):

...It just holds the shards together.

Richard Robinson (03:57):

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

(04:20):

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

Gaye Francis (04:49):

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

Richard Robinson (05:00):

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

(05:33):

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

(05:48):

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

Gaye Francis (06:05):

It was a very long drawn out process.

Richard Robinson (06:07):

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

Gaye Francis (06:34):

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

Richard Robinson (06:48):

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

Gaye Francis (07:37):

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

Richard Robinson (08:00):

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

Gaye Francis (08:10):

That's correct.

Richard Robinson (08:11):

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

(09:23):

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

Gaye Francis (09:59):

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

Richard Robinson (10:04):

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

(10:29):

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

Gaye Francis (10:38):

So building in design type stuff.

Richard Robinson (10:41):

Safety in design, basically.

Gaye Francis (10:42):

Safety in design.

Richard Robinson (10:43):

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

(10:54):

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

Gaye Francis (11:43):

That were confirmed by the major hazard facility and WorkSafe.

Richard Robinson (11:46):

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

(12:03):

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

Gaye Francis (12:59):

Nonsensical, isn't it?

Richard Robinson (13:00):

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

Gaye Francis (13:14):

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

Richard Robinson (13:36):

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

Gaye Francis (14:09):

Not technical experts.

(14:12):

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

Richard Robinson (14:38):

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

Gaye Francis (14:42):

...for the four people.

Richard Robinson (14:43):

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

Gaye Francis (14:47):

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

Richard Robinson (15:02):

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

Gaye Francis (15:06):

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