SFAIRP Complexity & Pressures for Stakeholders

In this first episode of Season 6 of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the pressures and complexities different stakeholders are having with SFAIRP

They follow on from the theme of Season 5, “Difficult Conversations Engineers Need to Have”, how it generated discussions and comments, and determined holding an in person event with speakers from different perspectives and professional backgrounds - a lawyer, an architect, and two engineer. 

Richard and Gaye highlight the need for a cooperative and collaborative approach among stakeholders, rather than a competitive one, in order to effectively implement SFAIRP. They also examine the challenges that arise when the commercial imperative conflicts with safety considerations, how independent consultants can facilitate these difficult conversations around SFAIRP, and reinforce the importance of all key stakeholders to be involved.

Details and tickets (Melbourne & online) for R2A’s Live Forum on 22 October 2025 “Preventing Criminal Manslaughter – Understanding & Implementing SFAIRP” can be found via https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/preventing-criminal-manslaughter-understanding-implementing-sfairp-tickets-1653602251849.

For further information on Richard and Gaye’s consulting work with R2A, head to https://www.r2a.com.au, where you’ll also find their booklets (store) and a sign-up for their quarterly newsletter to keep informed of their latest news and events.

Gaye is also founder of Australian women’s safety workwear company Apto PPE https://www.aptoppe.com.au.

Transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Season 6 of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the complexity and pressures stakeholders are having with SFAIRP.

(00:16):

We hope you enjoy the chat. If you do, please give us a rating and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform.

(00:23):

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.

(00:33):

You can also find details for the live forum they discuss in the podcast description. (Link: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/preventing-criminal-manslaughter-understanding-implementing-sfairp-tickets-1653602251849)

Gaye Francis (00:39):

Hi Richard. Welcome back to Season 6 of our podcast.

Richard Robinson (00:42):

A genuine surprise, I think!

Gaye Francis (00:44):

It is a very genuine surprise, Richard, I think, yes. 54 odd episodes so far.

Richard Robinson (00:51):

And we even upgraded our technology to suit.

Gaye Francis (00:54):

We have! So very excited to be back for season six. And I think we are going to lead on from what we did in season five. In season five, we sort of titled "Difficult discussions that engineers need to have", especially in the safety space and project space. And I think one of the interesting things from the last season was it generated a lot of discussions and interesting comments.

Richard Robinson (01:17):

It did. Which was a surprise to us. A further surprise to us.

Gaye Francis (01:20):

Correct. And we've actually just released our latest newsletter and in that newsletter we've got Q&A with R2A, which might become a regular feature I think. And so what we were thinking this season we would do would be to sort of build on the season five and those difficult conversations that engineers need to have or discussions that engineers need to have and take into account some of those questions and comments.

(01:46):

But it also motivated us, I guess, to hold an in-person event later this year in (22) October (2025). And we were actually having a discussion this morning about what this event was going to be called and what are some of the key things that we're going to talk about in it. So we thought that might be an interesting first podcast for our season six. So we might just go on with that. So do you want to give a little bit of an overview of who we've got coming to the podcast, oh, sorry, to the in-person event, and then we can have a discussion about how we were trying to talk about the stuff that we want to include and then some of the difficulties that engineers, architects, and lawyers are actually having with the idea of SFAIRP.

Richard Robinson (02:30):

Well, yes, and in fact that means we had to have in effect three core speakers with you acting as the facilitator.

Gaye Francis (02:36):

Correct.

Richard Robinson (02:36):

And resulting in your takeaways at the end of it all. But we needed a lawyer. And so we've got Joe Coleiro, who is the former, well, Wing Commander, basically, and wrote the Defense Aviation Safety Policy, which defined SFAIRP in a very precise way, far more precise than I think we've see most lawyers define. We first came across Joe when they invited us over to test our understanding of SFAIRP with his way of writing it up. And if it wasn't inappropriate, I probably would've given him a big hug at the time.

Gaye Francis (03:07):

Probably inappropriate, probably still inappropriate now. But, you know!

Richard Robinson (03:12):

He made some very interesting points because, and I have read this many times before where you just made the point, because in the "Understanding WHS Legislation" by Tooma and Sheriff, they basically make the point that SFAIRP is meant to be objective. Where using target levels as risk and safety is usually a personal thing that somebody has decided: this is the criteria we're going to use. And there's a whole lot of other interesting things flow from that.

(03:36):

The other person we've got is Dr. Frank Stocks who's an associate of ours who's an architect with a PhD in CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) who's busily designing stuff for the Auckland Airport and a few other things. And obviously the NZ legislation's got this SFAIRP in there and he's getting peculiar, frustrated with engineers who have to actually design to this standard and don't seem to really understand the significance of it. And so we felt it was appropriate to get...

Gaye Francis (04:04):

Three different (perspectives).

Richard Robinson (04:05):

And obviously I was going to expand on what David Howarth, the Professor of Law and Public Policy, when he came out to speak to us, when we invited to Melbourne just before COVID, and he sort of explained his understanding of law in a way that works with engineering because his presentation and book was actually "Law as Engineering, that is, Agents of Change". Whereas the lawyers are focused on the social environment and the engineers are focused on the physical environment, but they tend to overlap in the safety space, which is where it gets really complicated, which is what Frank is basically complaining about. And which in the aviation sector, which is what Joe is mostly remarking about, all needs to align. And I think that's something that's got us puzzled. It is not enough to have the engineers say "we got it right. And for the lawyers to say "we've got it right".

Gaye Francis (04:50):

Or the architects or the designers or anybody.

Richard Robinson (04:53):

The designers and the lawyers have to align.

Gaye Francis (04:57):

And I think that was one of the first discussions that we had about the SFAIRP concept was that it really has to be a cooperative process. It cannot be competitive, it has to be cooperative, and you have to have all of those key stakeholders in the room deciding what we are all going to do.

Richard Robinson (05:13):

And that was the point because the commercial imperative is pretty competitive.

Gaye Francis (05:18):

Absolutely.

Richard Robinson (05:19):

It bacically says we want the profit but the risk and which is what safety risk and environmentalists, those things, you tend to push away from yourself. That is the prudent commercial thing to do. But the whole point of the governance legislation, which is the SFAIRP type legislation for safety legislation and in Victoria is now the environmental legislation is saying, no, you can't do that. It has to be a collective decision, in effect, not just one party saying we've met our criteria.

Gaye Francis (05:49):

I think it goes further than that as well. It says, what can we do? Not who owns the risk. It's not about risk ownership and we've covered that in many other things, but it's about all the controls that you can put in place that are reasonably practicable.

Richard Robinson (06:04):

Well, that was the example because we were talking to Joe about it, the lawyer when he came in, it's like there was flying in an aircraft of 30,000 feet. You're on your way down in an unhappy state and the pilot says it's all good. We achieved that target level risk and safety when more could have been done.

Gaye Francis (06:18):

Yes. I guess as a passenger you're not sitting there thinking, oh, I'm glad the risk's so low that they're not going to do anything else about this while we're flying at 30,000 feet.

(06:31):

The next part of the conversation that it prompted was we were trying to define what SFAIRP means for different people. And as you said, we've got a lawyer, we've got Frank as the architect/designer, then there's us as engineers and due diligence engineers, and what it means for the different parties and stakeholders. And I think that's part of the complexity around it as well. When we talk about SFAIRP in an organisational sense, it's about the governance process that you undergo to demonstrate the due diligence requirements under the legislation. For for the directors, they're using it as a liability management tool.

Richard Robinson (07:08):

Yes.

Gaye Francis (07:09):

And for engineers and designers and architects, they're almost using it as, they're using it as safety and design, and it's all about all reasonable practicable precautions or controls. So you've got the (people), who often don't have all of the resources at their disposal.

Richard Robinson (07:28):

Don't have the final decision over the money usually.

Gaye Francis (07:31):

And so the pressures are being pushed down to the engineers and to designers in the organisation to manage the liability aspects for the directors. But they're often not in a position with all the resources and the components that they need to be able to do that.

Richard Robinson (07:52):

And certainly not the test for the elimination option, which we keep coming across. And the latest commission is about to address, I believe. Perhaps we won't talk about it though.

Gaye Francis (08:01):

But infrastructure projects in general. Yes. Typically don't look at the elimination option. And I think that's some of the interesting discussions that have been happening in our consulting work is, there's an ultimate client and there's a contractor delivering things.

Richard Robinson (08:16):

Yep.

Gaye Francis (08:17):

The contractor says, well, times have moved on. You've got a specification for a scope of work, but there's other things that you could do. What do we do with that information? And they do have to punt it up so the ultimate client can make the decision. But there's this mismatch between...

Richard Robinson (08:34):

The ultimate client probably doesn't want to make said decision either, which is the other difficulty, particularly in times of financial constraint. So unless they're a state cabinet who has no liability for such things, it's a very difficult decision to make.

Gaye Francis (08:47):

And so I think it goes back to that first conversation that we were having that all of those stakeholders need to be in the room to have these conversations. And SFAIRP is about that cooperative approach rather than competitive approach to be able to do that. So I think there's a lot of, SFAIRP pressures, if we want to call it, on the different stakeholders that make this situation, these discussions, very difficult.

Richard Robinson (09:15):

Well, it goes further than that because each one of those different stakeholders and their advisors actually come at it from a different point of view. So that means rather than having the cooperative outcome, you tend to get that competition in some way or another. And remember then that's where it gets really scrappy. I mean obviously you're going for the commercial imperative at one level, but disproportionality in a safety sense says: No, you have to hold that commercial imperative back in favour of safety. And that is not an easy conversation to have in the current day and age.

Gaye Francis (09:44):

No, it's definitely not. Independent consultants sometimes help with that, don't we, to have those conversations.

Richard Robinson (09:52):

We're part of the due diligence process to make sure that what needs to have been done was seen to be done.

Gaye Francis (09:57):

So it's that facilitation of it. And I think that goes then back to the organisational governance process of demonstrating due diligence.

Richard Robinson (10:04):

Well, but see, that's what's happening to us though. I mean, we'd always find from our viewpoint, if you haven't got the lawyers on side when you start the job, it's problematic. To try to get them back up to speed after it's done is sometimes awkward. But it's more than that. It's not as though the jobs we're doing we have full knowledge, technical knowledge of all the options and all the details. It's not possible for independents like us to do that.

Gaye Francis (10:29):

No, and that's why you rely on key stakeholders being identified and being involved in the process. So as we said before, as consultants, we're almost holding up a mirror to the key stakeholders and then...

Richard Robinson (10:42):

But document in a way that all the parties are satisfied with the result.

Gaye Francis (10:46):

Correct. So there's some interesting things that are happening and it's not a simple fix, and I think the complexities are increasing as time goes on.

Richard Robinson (11:02):

Because of the commercial pressures are becoming more severe. And I don't know quite what's happening, but we were sort of commenting it before, but the tendency to say "I" ahead of "we" has been increasing vigorously in the last couple of years.

Gaye Francis (11:16):

In business as in social, I would think as a community we're doing that as well.

Richard Robinson (11:21):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (11:22):

So this season we're going to concentrate on those SFAIRP pressures and the different aspects that go with that. Another one off the top of my head is the competing legislation, but I think that's a whole other podcast about the different requirements of different legislation and standards and what that means for SFAIRP.

(11:40):

But we hope you enjoyed the introduction to season six and join us for our next one as we continue to explore those difficult SFAIRP pressures. Thanks for joining us, Richard.

Richard Robinson (11:54):

Thanks Gaye.