About the Guest:

Trish Kerin is the former Director of the IChemE Safety Centre and a globally recognized process safety leader whose career spans Mobil Oil, Australian Vinyls, and Wesfarmers Kleenheat Gas, where she served as National Health and Safety Manager. She has represented industry on government committees, served on the board of Australia’s National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority, and received top honors, including the Trevor Kletz Merit Award and the Women in Safety Leader of the Year award.

Through the award-winning podcast Process Safety with Trish and Traci (a Jesse H. Neal Award winner), she breaks down incidents such as Flixborough, Texas City, and Buncefield to extract patterns that help prevent future catastrophes.

Episode Highlights:

🦆 The Platypus Philosophy®

Trish’s Platypus Philosophy® is a framework for identifying, collating, and analyzing weak signals of potential hazardous events before they escalate into incidents. Using the memorable PLATYPUS acronym, it trains practitioners to spot anomalies—the “platypuses” that don’t fit expected patterns and are often dismissed because they challenge existing mental models. This philosophy tackles cognitive biases that cause people to overlook early warning signs, helping organizations shift from reactive fixes to proactive risk control.​

🧠 People, Stories, and Safety

Trish champions the mindset shift from “people as the problem” to “people as the solution,” coaching leaders to harness frontline insight instead of defaulting to blame. She is also known for The Four Cs of Effective Process Safety Storytelling, a framework that helps organizations communicate complex safety concepts in ways that stick and change behavior. Through powerful stories and case studies, she shows how the right narrative can prevent “incident amnesia” and keep critical lessons alive over time.

🌍 Automation, AI, and New Weak Signals

As industries adopt more automation and AI, Trish highlights emerging weak signals leaders must learn to recognize—from algorithmic anomalies to changes in operator engagement and overconfidence in “smart” systems. She also explores how sustainability goals intersect with process safety, including where green ambitions can unintentionally introduce new risks if not thoughtfully managed.​

📩 Contact & Resources:

* 🎧 Podcast: Process Safety with Trish and Traci

* ​IChemE Safety Centre

* The Platypus Philosophy: How to identify and manage weak signals

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