Risk! Engineers Talk Governance

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In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss where AI can be used in Work Health and Safety (WHS/OHS). 

They look at where it is likely to go rather than where it is now, including AI as a watchdog for control rooms and marine pilotage, and why small, locally run models may suit confidential client data better than cloud tools. They also cover AI in safe systems of work, who is accountable when AI informs board decisions, and why a convincing answer is not necessarily a correct one.

If you’d like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we’d love to hear from you. Email [email protected]. 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.

Show notes:

• 00:33 – Where AI is used in work health and safety
• 01:04 – AI as a watchdog: alarms, rail and ports
• 02:36 – Local small language models and data confidentiality
• 03:21 – Marine pilotage: a second set of eyes
• 07:42 – AI in SOPs and safe systems of work
• 09:26 – Accountability for AI-informed board decisions
• 10:28 – Why convincing answers aren’t always correct
• 12:00 – Why engineers need to keep up with AI

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In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss Hazard and Risk versus Threat and Vulnerability – Top Down, Bottom Up. 

The podcast discussion includes:

• How bottom-up techniques are creeping back into risk assessments, even though WHS legislation focuses on criticality and asks what is reasonable in the circumstances, 
• How prosecutions are shaping what "critical" means in practice, 
• Why cutting minor-incident rates doesn't remove fatality risk, and 
• Why the two methodologies each have a place if used at the right time. 

If you'd like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we'd love to hear from you: email [email protected]. 

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

Timestamps

• 00:34 – Why revisit hazard and risk versus threat and vulnerability: a drift back to bottom-up techniques despite the WHS focus on criticality
• 01:13 – Prosecution patterns in Australia: SFAIRP is hard to prosecute, smaller organisations and repeat or multiple-fatality events get targeted
• 03:26 – WHS Codes of Practice are written around single-fatality hazards such as working at heights, and the language confusion that follows
• 04:03 – Bird and Heinrich's triangle, and the elimination of fatalities task force in underground mining
• 06:29 – WHS asks what controls are practicable and reasonable, not whether the risk is bad enough to act
• 07:18 – Hazard and risk as middle-management, bottom-up measures versus threat and vulnerability as national-interest, top-down thinking (the desalination plant and defence examples)
• 08:30 – Criticality in two bands: single or multiple fatalities versus rare mass-casualty events
• 09:16 – How major events change policy, and the New Zealand experience including the Port of Auckland prosecution
• 10:27 – Differing state approaches and the pending Safe Work Australia review
• 10:49 – Wrap-up: both methodologies have insight, so use each in the right place at the right time

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In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss New Zealand's Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill, which received Royal Assent on 9 July and commences 1 April 2027. 

They unpack the shift towards a focus on critical risks for small business and an expanded role for approved codes of practice, and question whether this makes the regime more prescriptive than the "reasonably practicable" standard intended. The conversation moves to a Wellington waterfront fatality case and the accountability questions it raises for local councils and their executives.

If you'd like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we'd love to hear from you. Email [email protected]. For further information on Richard and Gaye's work with R2A, head to https://www.r2a.com.au.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 00:40 – NZ Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill receives Royal Assent (9 July), effect from 1 April 2027
• 01:23 – Speed of the Bill through NZ Parliament compared to Australia
• 01:53 – Key changes: focus on critical events for small business; expanded role of approved codes of practice
• 02:34 – Tension between codes of practice as a "minimum standard" and the "reasonably practicable" objective
• 03:16 – R2A's process for testing and documenting what's reasonable in the circumstances
• 04:36 – Richard's two closing workshop questions, and using AI as a "watchdog" for critical issues
• 05:16 – Richard's experiment running local AI models on Mac hardware
• 06:15 – Controls evolve even when critical issues don't; AI as a possible future control or QA system
• 06:56 – Port automation, wearable tracking tech, and phone-based hazard alerts
• 08:04 – Recap: NZ's shift to criticality focus and increased use of codes of practice
• 08:38 – Port of Auckland CEO Tony Gibson prosecution and its link to the new amendment
• 09:13 – Case study: Wellington waterfront fatality (referred by NZ associate Frank Stocks)
• 09:41 – Details of the incident and the coronial inquiry
• 10:40 – Prior fatality two years earlier (Sandy Calkin) and unimplemented lighting/edge-protection recommendations
• 11:08 – Criticism of Wellington council for rejecting the recommendations
• 12:04 – Who bears liability — councillors vs council executive
• 12:50 – Parallel with Owners Corporation committees and volunteer liability in Australia
• 14:15 – Debate: should businesses be expected to know all their hazards?
• 14:49 – Prescriptive vs "reasonably practicable" regimes, and why WA delayed its own WHS Act
• 15:44 – Will Australia follow New Zealand's more prescriptive approach?
• 17:04 – Which legislation will apply if the Wellington case proceeds to prosecution
• 17:36 – Close

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In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and (Risk Engineer Achievement Award winner!) Gaye Francis discuss Risk, Uncertainty, and Hallucinations. 

Prompted by a recent course on AI and probability, Richards exaplins how large language models actually work as giant inference engines predicting the "most likely" next word, and why that's fundamentally different from genuine risk assessment. 

They explore why AI can widen the number of scenarios you can process without ever solving the harder problem of criticality — the rare, high-consequence events that haven't happened before, but still need to be found and controlled by human judgement.

If you'd like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we'd love to hear from you: email [email protected].

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 the quarterly newsletter to keep informed of our latest news and events.

Apto PPE is also available via the R2A online store.

Show Notes

• (00:56) Richard congratulates Gaye on winning the Risk Engineer Achievement Award at the Melbourne Engineering Excellence Awards, recognising 25+ years in risk due diligence, industry publications, podcasts, bushfire and public safety work, and advocacy for women in engineering
• (02:27) The founding of Apto (Women's) PPE and its impact at forcing the market to offer proper female PPE
• (04:30) Setting up today's topic: why people still default to thinking about risk as consequence and likelihood, rather than criticality and control
• (04:53) Richard's University of Helsinki AI course and the link between AI probability weighting and Markov chains, used at R2A for availability modelling
• (05:32) Different types of probability — fixed-outcome events (a coin toss) versus genuine future uncertainty (geopolitical shocks, oil markets)
• (06:18) How LLMs generate "hallucinations" (or Geoffrey Hinton's term, "confabulations"), tokenising context and predicting the statistically most likely next word, sometimes inventing plausible-sounding but false attributions
• (07:16–08:16) AI as a Monte Carlo-style tool: useful for running large numbers of trials fast, but this doesn't eliminate criticality, it only shrinks the pool while critical outcomes still have to be identified
• (09:08–09:42) The limits of AI's training cutoff; it can't flag risks that haven't happened before or reflect a rapidly changing context; identifying criticality still requires human judgement
• (10:26–11:12) The risk of the next generation treating AI output as "gospel" without questioning it
• (11:16–11:41) Wrap-up: risk as future uncertainty, AI as a tool for faster insight, but criticality and control remain R2A's core focus

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In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss Proactive vs Reactive Due Diligence - what does R2A actually do?

In their chat they unpack why timing changes everything and that proactive work happens before problems occur, while reactive work (like expert witness testimony) occurs after something's already gone wrong, and by then it's often too late to fix cheaply. 

Drawing on real examples, they explain why early engagement is cheaper, less adversarial, and allows genuine design fixes happen while there's still time.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 00:40 – Why this topic: R2A is often asked "what do you do?" 
• 01:08 – The core frustration: being brought in for "proactive" due diligence too late in the project
• 01:39 – Why engineering-style thinking beats legal philosophy for avoiding mistakes
• 03:19 – Why lawyers and busy clients use R2A 
• 03:54 – Bringing multiple stakeholders' views together into one structured conversation
• 04:22 – Case example: Brought in practively
• 05:24 – What proactive due diligence actually delivers: structured, defensible clarity
• 06:28 – Why proactive due diligence doesn't need to be difficult or expensive
• 06:58 – Aligning siloed stakeholders (commercial, legal, operational, regulatory)
• 08:12 – Why design-stage fixes disappear once a project reaches "practical completion"
• 09:23 – Case example: relocating a Queensland switch yard to design out a hazard early
• 10:00 – The payoff of early engagement: easier process, stakeholders on side
• 11:01 – Swinburne University postgrad unit on project due diligence
• 11:36 – Why some people grasp the criticality-and-control approach instantly — and others don't
• 12:00 – Wrap-up

Note, they mention discussing NZ Harbour in the last episode, this will be the next episode (#4).

If you'd like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we'd love to hear from you. Email [email protected].

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.

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In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss how Elimination Has Its Own Hierarchy Of Control.

They unpack how the traditional hierarchy of controls (elimination, substitution, isolation, engineering, admin, PPE) collapses under WHS legislation into eliminate–prevent–mitigate, and why the elimination step can't be skipped until it's genuinely tested and ruled out. Using real examples, from rockfalls above a Sydney rail line to level crossings, they show that "eliminate" usually means choosing between stopping one activity, stopping another, or re-engineering the interaction entirely, and why that reasoning needs to be documented, not just assumed.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Intro: elimination and its own internal hierarchy of controls
• 01:03 – The traditional hierarchy of controls explained via a noisy machine example, plus WHS legislation's eliminate–prevent–mitigate structure
• 03:49 – Why elimination must be properly tested before moving on — illustrated through the Lapstone rockfall case (stopping trains vs a tunnel vs doing nothing)
• 06:15 – Level crossings as a three-way elimination choice (stop trains, stop cars, grade separation), plus the dam wall and airspace design examples
• 09:09 – The governance shift: formally documenting why eliminated options were ruled out, and using threat barrier diagrams to test reasonableness
• 11:31 – Wrap-up, including the Comeng trains example of an elimination option that's valid but cost-prohibitive

If you’d like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we’d love to hear from you. Email [email protected].

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.

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In this first episode of Season 8, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis look at "criticality and control", starting with the pink elephant problem: Why organisations that successfully prevent bad outcomes often end up defunding the very risk functions responsible for that success. 

During their chat, they unpack the Port of Auckland conviction and what it reveals about the gap between Australian and New Zealand WHS enforcement, a local government case study on engineering versus insurance priorities, and why short-term commercial thinking clashes with the long timeframes in real risk management demands. They close with a preview of what's ahead this season, plus a few early thoughts on where AI does — and doesn't — belong in risk practice.

Timestamps:

• 00:36 – Season 8 introduction
• 01:07 – Port of Auckland conviction and NZ vs. Australia WHS enforcement
• 03:23 – Season 8 topics ahead
• 04:57 – The pink elephant story
• 07:47 – Local government case study
• 09:07 – Short-termism vs. long-term risk
• 09:41 – Bushfire risk and generational memory
• 12:01 – Closing thoughts on AI

If you’d like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we’d love to hear from you. Email [email protected].

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.

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In this season finale of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis reflect on Season 7's central theme of SFAIRP and the growing divide between moral imperative of work health and safety legislation and the commercial pressures organisations face in practice.

After their recap of topics covered, the conversation focuses on AI's growing role in decision, using marine pilotage as their example. Richard outlines ways AI could be applied, such as AI as the pilot, with crew simply responding to its instructions; a smarter Personal Pilotage Unit (PPU) that draws on historical passage data of what previous pilots did under similar conditions, while leaving the final call to the human pilot; and TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) where the system directs action in an emergency. 

The finish the episodes with their concerns of how commercial forces are pushing AI tools as replacements for human judgement, while the safety case for that level of trust hasn't been made, and the instinct to treat AI output as gospel needs to be actively resisted.

Thanks for all your support in Season 7! Watch out for Season 8.

If you’d like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we’d love to hear from you. Email [email protected].

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.

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In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the mathematics behind risk modelling and why relying on heat maps for decision-making can have limitations.

Richard and Gaye explore the concept of the "ideal" hazard risk curve, unpacking why every hazard carries its own unique risk profile rather than a neat line of constant risk. Drawing on Heinrich's accident triangle and the hyperbolic relationship between consequence and likelihood, Richard walks through the calculus of integrating under a risk curve, and why simply "spotting the dot" on a five-by-five risk matrix can underestimate high-consequence, low-likelihood events by an order of magnitude or more.

They discuss the limitations of the standard risk matrix for large organisations dealing with vastly different scales of risk, and why New Zealand's updated WHS legislation is shifting focus toward identifying critical hazards and credible controls first, rather than getting bogged down debating likelihood.

Key takeaways:

• Heat maps are useful for communication, but dangerous as standalone decision-making tools
• The area under the risk curve matters – it's far larger than a single dot suggests
• Safety risk assessment should prioritise critical hazards and reasonable controls over likelihood arguments

Note: This episode references slides — for the full visual experience, check out the YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/R2aAu.

If you’d like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we’d love to hear from you. Email [email protected]. 

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.

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In the second of two episodes of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance on How Information Sharing has Changed, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss how the Public Sphere has evolved and what it ultimately means for SFAIRP.

Richard starts the chat outlining the work of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, tracing the journey of public discourse from coffee houses through to commercially-driven newspapers and media moguls, to today's podcast landscape. 

They discuss why they believe high-quality, discussion-based podcasts seem to be rising above the noise, how real-time expert conversation is replacing the slower editorial cycle of print media, and why helping people distinguish credible information has never been more important.

Richard and Gaye conclude the episode bringing the discussion back to SFAIRP (So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable) and how truly informed decisionmaking, whether in workplace health and safety or in a democracy, depends on robust, thoughtful public discussion rather than siloed, commercially driven narratives.

They also highlight how long it took R2A to move from target level of risk and safety to SFAIRP, and how they hope their podcast helps others better understand it.

If you’d like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we’d love to hear from you. Email [email protected].

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.