Target Levels of Risk & Safety - SFAIRP vs ALARP Revisited

In this episode, of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis revisit the distinction between SFAIRP (So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable) and Target Levels of Risk and Safety.  

They explain how target levels of risk continue to be problematic in engineering despite being legally unsupportable under WHS/OHS legislation and share examples of regulators and engineers still using outdated approaches and discuss why this confusion persists, pointing to issues with Standards and educational institutions that continue teaching these methods.

They clarify that SFAIRP asks "Are all reasonable practical precautions in place?" while target based approaches rely solely on calculated risk levels. Through real-world examples including expert witness cases and engineering consultations, they demonstrate how the SFAIRP approach leads to better safety outcomes and alignment between stakeholders and warn engineers and organisations still using target levels of risk for safety issues.

This conversation follows their original discussion in Season 1 Episode 1: SFAIRP vs ALARP (listen at https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/2180928/episodes/13021822-sfairp-vs-alarp-risk-engineers-talk-governance-podcast)

While the table they refer to is available in their Criminal Manslaughter – How Not To Do It booklet, available online at https://www.r2a.com.au/store/p/r2a-criminal-manslaughter-directors-booklet

Richard and Gaye also run public and in-house workshops on the topic.

For further information on Richard and Gaye’s consulting work with R2A, head to https://www.r2a.com.au.

Gaye is also founder of women’s safety workwear company Apto PPE if you’d like to check out the garments at https://www.aptoppe.com.au

Transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis revisit the topic of target levels of risk and safety.

(00:13):

We hope you enjoy the chat. If you do, please give us a rating and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. If you'd like more information on R2A's work or have any feedback or topic ideas, please head to the website www.r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:33):

Hi Richard, welcome to our podcast session today.

Richard Robinson (00:37):

Good day Gaye. I'm glad I'm over. I can tell you that

Gaye Francis (00:39):

I'm glad you're over Covid. You're thinking a bit better now. So that's always a good thing.

(00:44):

Today we're actually going to revisit one of our topics that we've talked about in the first season (Season 1 Ep 1) I think it was, and it was around SFAIRP and ALARP. So this one's titled Target Levels of Risk Revisited. And I guess the reason for revisiting it, it's that it's had over 200 listens on the podcast for the previous one, but we are finding more and more that target levels of risk and safety are still causing problems and still being called up and still being used and even more so I think now than they have in the last five years.

Richard Robinson (01:23):

But the consequences of this is that all these other parties are turning up to talk to us, to actually ask us to do more to overcome it. And by that I mean for example, we just had a regulator from New South Wales where a lot of the stuff seems to be based sort of wanting us to actually come and give a paper or presentation to their regulator, their conference, about why you ought not to be using the hazard and risk-based approach within SIL allocation processes, which is something we've talked about at a great length. And then we had also another visitor from another state regulator and they want us to act as the peer reviewer for the registration of fire engineers. And in particular they want us to make sure that everybody understands as a fire engineer that it's all being driven by the provisions of the WHS/OHS legislation, which a law fire engineers still don't seem to grasp and still want to keep using target levels of risk and safety. And then more than that, we then had an engineer from Western Australia pop up and I'm really literally talking about the last three weeks I suppose.

Gaye Francis (02:24):

Correct.

Richard Robinson (02:26):

Basicly explaining how EG-0 which uses target levels of risk and safety, it's completely unsupportable and which, so far as his concern had been overturned in the state in which he lives, has suddenly made a reappearance. And we're sort of saying this is peculiar because the serious players saying don't do it. And yet for reasons that we don't understand, it keeps coming back.

Gaye Francis (02:49):

I think it goes down to, and another topic that we'll probably talk about in this season, is that silo work and people doing things in silos and not understanding the overall context and the high level context as you said, that the WHS and OHS legislation really runs anything to do with safety.

Richard Robinson (03:08):

Correct. And it drives it. I mean we don't get it because I mean we live in a democratic society run with the rule of law and our parliaments actually do decide, and there was this contest of ideas, and they did adopt the WHS legislation with criminal manslaughter provision I might point out, as well as the peculiar duties on designers and the Section 22. And it basically hammers it forever. We just don't simply understand why engineers in particular don't seem to grasp this point.

Gaye Francis (03:37):

It's probably worth just giving a brief overview of what we mean by SFAIRP and target levels of risk and safety and the difference between the two.

Richard Robinson (03:46):

Well, we've been observing that ALARP is mutating into SFAIRP that the bit that's not mutating properly is the target levels of risk and safety. And this notion that risk assessments of themselves will provide you with an answer and describe why you don't have to do any more and that's just patently incorrect.

Gaye Francis (04:03):

So for us, the basis or the difference between the two are the SFAIRP principle says: Are all reasonable practical precautions in place? And the target level of risk and safety says that a calculation has been done based on consequence and likelihood and then that's as low as it can be. So that's sort of the two ideas that we think that there is a difference. And as you said, the principles around ALARP have been mutating into different things and they're sort of now asking the question, well even if the risk target is this much, can we do anything more?

Richard Robinson (04:43):

Yes.

Gaye Francis (04:47):

But really we're talking about SFAIRP and target levels of risk and safety.

Richard Robinson (04:52):

And I think we've basically decided we're going to stop talking about ALARP per se and just don't keep talking about target is risk and safety, because that's the path that fails. And that's the path that the risk management standard keeps encouraging. And I guess that's why we think people keep adopting it. I actually think an awful lot of this has got to do with Standards Australia, which we've already sort of talked about, and the fact that for reasons that we don't understand, Standards Australia haven't been picking up their game. It's got a lot to do with the fact, and again, one of these engineers asked about EG-0 that's endorsed by ENA, the Energy Networks Australia organisation, no liability seems to be being assigned back to the authority that's endorsing these things.

Gaye Francis (05:33):

Okay.

Richard Robinson (05:34):

Now I dunno legally whether that's actually the case because it was the question I was being asked and I'm not law enough to answer that one. But it does seem to me that if the reason why that people are still using target levels of risk and safety is because either Standards Australia either inadvertently or deliberately let it happen or in the case of Energy Networks Australia, they deliberately let EG-0 continue in the way that it's been going. We simply don't get it. I mean I can distinctly remember this is sort of one of these weird things that I was giving briefing to one of the boards, I better not say which one, but one of the distribution boards about the limitation of target levels of risk and safety and why he couldn't use EG-0, and when I stepped out the back, the fellow who drafted EG-0 was actually running a course on the subject. What I was doing was briefing the board with the support of the legal counsel for that organisation and yet the engineers were being taught at the back to go and use target levels of risk and safety at the same time. Now you sort of look at that and say, how is that possible?

Gaye Francis (06:32):

And you wonder why engineers are confused.

Richard Robinson (06:34):

Correct. Because they're being taught it.

Gaye Francis (06:36):

Yep.

Richard Robinson (06:37):

I remember I told you I was one of the defense engineers, I was busily explaining the difference between the two, and this bright young female engineer was looking at me said: I only finished university last year and they were teaching the risk management standard and target levels of risk and safety. I sort of went, yeah, it's a bit hard when the whole system or part of the system continues to teach it like it's a science when it simply doesn't pass the test.

Gaye Francis (07:01):

I think when the WHS legislation came in, we were in a conference or in a meeting and regulators give advice and so unless it's called up by legislation they can't be held accountable. Was that the way it was with standards as well? Because you said because the liability is not going back to the people that are putting out the standards, I guess their guidances, aren't they? And then you've got to really sit back and have a look at it and see whether it's relevant and applicable to what you're doing.

Richard Robinson (07:33):

But that was part of the point about the... Remember that quote from that lawyer from Minter Ellison about regarding AS 7000 and he's pointing out, now unless the standard's called up by statute of regulation, which they're pretty much not anymore, it only amounts to expert advice, but an engineer still has to exercise his or her skill and expertise irrespective of what the standard says. And what that was all about. I mean, I sort of explained this before with standards have two purposes: Preventing fools from their follie and rogues from their roguery because what you're supposed to do is figure out how it ought to be and then you go, and that's a design issue that's got nothing to do with target levels of risk and safety. You're saying right in the circumstance for this particular problem, what's the best solution?

(08:16):

You might recall again for the electrical company I was talking about, we were doing that review on the sub-station, which was next to the train lines and we were trying to figure out, because when you get earth return current, you've got obviously rail tracks going next to it you've got the ability to transfer high voltages and currents over a long distance when you've got steel rail tracks nearby is actually quite relatively easy even though it's an unlikely thing. And in the end, after we went through the process and this was following the provisions of the WHS Act, well in that case, the same SFAIRP principle as it was contained in their revised Electrical Safety Act, they basically sold the site and moved far enough away that the earth return currents couldn't affect, or the railways couldn't be part...

Gaye Francis (08:56):

So they couldn't put enough controls in place or precautions in place to allow it or determine it to be SFAIRP.

Richard Robinson (09:03):

Well you had to eliminate if you could. And the short answer was we could sell the site and buy the another one down the road and it was the cheapest way to fix it.

Gaye Francis (09:09):

So that comes back to my line, doesn't it? The difference between the two is target levels of risk and safety asks: Is this bad enough that we need to do something about it? Whereas SFAIRP is saying, here's a good idea, why wouldn't we do it?

Richard Robinson (09:21):

Correct. And the target of risk and safety is basically pathological in James Reason's terms, "here's a good idea", that is the objective of the legislation. The highest level of control as is reasonably practicable.

Gaye Francis (09:35):

And I think though, the key reason we keep pushing the SFAIRP principles is that we do give expert witnesses. Richard's doing an expert witness case at the moment and the opponent's argument is around target levels of risk and safety that it's really so low that we don't have to worry about it and where there's good ideas that can be put in place and so the court is going to test it.

Richard Robinson (10:04):

Well, it's going to be absolutely fascinating because one of the other things. You know we've got that little table (Criminal Manslaughter Booklet p24) and we when we run the course, we sort (show) the advantages and disadvantages between the two approaches and the solution-based approach, which is looking at here's a good idea, everybody comes together to look for it. Whereas when you do the hazard and the risk stuff, it devolves into detail. Everybody gets lost. And I can tell you the lawyers and the barristers are very lost in a whole lot of technical. Part of the problem is when you're going from what's the molecular weight of something and most times that's expressed in grams per mole, but a lot of people want to express it in kilograms per kilo mole. Well at this point, I'm not sure the court's basically with us in the discussion!

Gaye Francis (10:51):

And the numbers have been changing as well depending on what the circumstances that you're going to base your calculation on. So for us, we've always said that the WHS legislation/OHS legislation requires SFAIRP. ALARP as a term is still being used, but it has mutated into something that it wasn't. But R2A are really against and you can't use target levels of risk and safety to deal with safety issues.

Richard Robinson (11:22):

Correct. And I suppose just sort of a final point, I mean you may recall last year we did that review in that tall building and we had two sets of lawyers, one for the underwriter, one for the body corporate, and there were two sets of fire engineers and a lot of damage that occurred and what the underwriter's willing to pay for and what the body corporate thought should be the case, they were heading towards a court case.

(11:49):

And the last chance I think was when they got the couple of due diligence engineers and we ran a workshop and we explained the provisions of the WHS legislation and the lawyers looked at each other and said, yes, that's right. And then the fire engineers whom they've advised us afterwards, were getting ready to walk because they weren't going to sign off on the solutions that were being suggested, I think by the other party there were two sets. Once the WHS legislature was evoked, everybody aligned and the fire engineers said, thank goodness for that, we can sign off on the solution that's resulting.

Gaye Francis (12:25):

It was working towards a solution that everybody agreed to, wasn't it?

Richard Robinson (12:29):

And that's just hammering the point. There's no such thing legally, so far as we know as a risk assessment, it's a risk design assessment and that's where people seem to get it wrong. And I do not understand why that part, you would've thought the engineers would've thought design. That's us.

Gaye Francis (12:45):

It's a lot easier to do as well.

Richard Robinson (12:48):

The other options are just appalling. And I've just watched as this case, it was meant to be finished a few weeks ago and it got deferred. So more risk assessment work could be done. And I don't think it's going to help the court at all, but I'll find out soon.

Gaye Francis (13:02):

You will find out in a week's time.

(13:05):

So we just wanted to revisit that subject today, target levels of risk and safety and the SFAIRP principle, try and explain the difference between the two, and hopefully just give you a bit of a heads up that if some of your standards are still using target levels of risk and safety, be really careful, especially around safety issues.

(13:24):

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

Richard Robinson (13:28):

Indeed.