In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the obligations for engineers under the WHS legislation (OHS Act in Victoria) and understanding the importance of their role if things go wrong.

They discuss the fact that Work Health and Safety (WHS) legislation is the overarching legislation in Australia that must guide engineering design and decision-making, and their surprise at this lack of awareness and how many still (wrongly) use Standards as a design basis.

They emphasise that engineers are central to upholding WHS requirements, as they are the designers responsible when things go wrong and that the engineering design process needs to be a top-down, holistic approach that considers all relevant stakeholders and objectives, not a bottom-up siloed approach. 

Find out more about Richard and Gaye’s consulting work at https://www.r2a.com.au.  

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the application of due diligence in the Marine Pilotage industry. 

They discuss various consulting work they’ve done with Marine Pilots across Australia and New Zealand ports, and summarise the key take-away that the process is no different for pilotage due diligence reviews than any other (industry’s) due diligence review. 

That is, 

• There needs to be an argument as to why all the credible critical issues have been identified. 
• In a port, they typically look at all the user groups and what activities they're doing. 
• Look at all the controls that can be put in place, which are reasonable in the circumstances. 
• Always needs to be a quality assurance system to make sure that what is being put in place are sustained and managed accordingly. 

But, noting, there will be site specific or port specific issues so the controls put in place may be different.

Find out more about Richard and Gaye’s consulting work at https://www.r2a.com.au.  

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the new booklet titled "Due Diligence Essentials for Engineers" being authored by Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis. 

They talk about the need for the booklet being that Engineers are becoming more involved in the governance process in providing information to boards, directors and senior people. Engineers are ones aware of the critical things that can go wrong and what boards need to know about for their due diligence obligations under the WHS/OHS legislation.

Other areas of discussion include:

• Whilst most engineers aren't directors and, therefore, don't have the due diligence obligations as spelt out by the WHS legislation, the legislation is specific about duties of designers.
• Engineers can not rely on Standards or Codes of Practice to absolve themselves of liability.
• When should engineers elevate issues to higher levels of decision-makers, and the importance of transparency in their decision-making process.
• Engineers can't be right all the time, but can be diligent. And with Registration of Engineers, due diligence provides a tool to be able to say they’ve done everything that is reasonable in the circumstances to make whatever they’re working on safe.

For more information about Richard and Gaye’s consulting work, head to https://www.r2a.com.au/

The books mentioned in this episode can be found at https://www.r2a.com.au/store

If you’d like to be kept up-to-date with R2A news, including the launch of “Due Diligence Essentials for Engineers”, sign up at https://www.r2a.com.au/newsletter 

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the differences between the "laws of man" and the "laws of nature" in the context of due diligence engineering. 

Drawing on their experiences as Expert Witnesses in the Australian and NZ judicial systems, the conversation covers the following key points:

• A brief history of Common Law.
• The adversarial system in common law, where lawyers argue different sides of a case before a judge or jury, differs from the inquisitorial system in civil law jurisdictions.
• The principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is a logical consequence of the adversarial system, rather than a fundamental legal principle.
• The Scottish legal system has a third verdict of "not proven" in addition to "guilty" and "not guilty", which the speakers suggest is a more pragmatic approach.
• Expert witnesses in court proceedings have a duty to the court rather than the party who hired them, which can lead to challenges when presenting evidence.
• Engineers need to manage the laws of nature first and then satisfy the laws of man in the courts.

 Find out more about Richard and Gaye’s consulting work at https://www.r2a.com.au.  

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the application of the due diligence process to the aviation industry. 

Richard discusses his recent presentation to the Australian Aviation Wildlife Hazard Group where he used the expert witness view: What is it that could have been done and if it had been done, would it have stopped it going wrong? 

Key take-aways:

- Hazards and vulnerabilities in aviation, 
- Why R2A stays away from the term risk and adopts the military approach which is to say threat, 
- Preferred communication tools, and 
- The point of the due diligence process, which legislation requires, is demonstrating you were diligent and demonstrated you cared; that you did everything reasonably practicable you could in the circumstance.

Find out more about Richard and Gaye’s consulting work at https://www.r2a.com.au.  

 In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss controls and liability when it comes to AI and robots. 

OHS/WHS legislation require achieving the highest level of hazard control that is reasonably practicable. AI/Robots present potential controls to address many safety issues and can be implemented to improve safety. 

They discuss a number of examples where AI and robots are already enhancing safety and removing people from dangerous tasks, and when it comes to due diligence, organisations would need to demonstrate why it is not reasonably practicable to use them. 

The chat also covers how AI provides situational awareness and information to support human decision-making. Quality assurance processes are still necessary to ensure the robustness of AI-generated information. 

And that the use of AI technology also raises questions about liability, ethics, and morals.

If you’d like to find out more about Richard and Gaye’s consulting work, head to https://www.r2a.com.au.

Find out more about their publications at https://www.r2a.com.au/store.

Find out more about their training at https://www.r2a.com.au/education

In the first episode of Season 4 of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the judicial need for reliable knowledge and the need to demonstrate causation. 

They highlight some of their Expert Witness examples to demonstrate how for the courts to come to a decision, they have to not only have an understanding of what went wrong, but if there was something that could have been done that would've prevented the incident. And if this hasn’t been made clear, then making a decision becomes very complicated. 

From the point of view of the courts, if things don't happen because there's a causal link to which you can assign liability or responsibility, how can they make a decision? 

They finish by talking how often it’s due process and, on a certain level, it is more important to have a decision society can live with rather than actually getting it right. 

If you’d like to find out more about Richard and Gaye’s consulting work, head to https://www.r2a.com.au.

Find out more about their publications at https://www.r2a.com.au/store.

Find out more about their training at https://www.r2a.com.au/education 

In this special Risk! Engineers Talk Governance episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the recent IT outage that affected systems worldwide and the importance of criticality and resilience. 

Main take-aways include:

• The outage was predictable and foreseeable. It was a critical incident.
• You can't gold plate a single system so that it won't fail. 
• The importance of redundancy – ensuring you've got another independent system that doesn't rely on the primary system.
• Engineering organisations are required to look at the credible worst case scenarios that can happen and what you can do and put in place to make sure that they're managed
• You need to positively demonstrate due diligence about what you're doing. And due diligence means that you take into account the credible critical issues. 
• When doing these reviews, you have to talk with the senior decision makers, who understand the business’ critical requirements.

If you’d like to find out more about Richard and Gaye’s work, head to https://www.r2a.com.au.

The book they refer to is Due Diligence Engineering and can be purchased online at https://www.r2a.com.au/store/p/r2a-engineering-due-diligence-textbook.

In the final episode of season three of the Risk! Engineers Talk Governance podcast, due diligence engineers Richard Roberson and Gaye Francis discuss the theme of criticality and design in the context of climate change and sustainability due diligence. 

They discuss:

• The consequences of redirecting rivers for irrigation, 
• Why the Victorian Government built the, to now, unused desalination plant, and argue if they should be considering the potential impacts of global warming,
• Three possible design solutions: Sun shields, increasing cloudiness, and fertilising the Southern Ocean to address climate change, and
• How knowledge, technology and costs of design solutions are constantly changing. 

The textbook where the three design solutions are highlighted is R2A’s Engineering Due Diligence which you can find at https://www.r2a.com.au/store/p/r2a-engineering-due-diligence-textbook

For more information on Richard and Gaye’s due diligence work, head to https://www.r2a.com.au/. 

And if you have any comments, feedback or topic ideas for Season 4, email us at [email protected].

In this episode of the Risk! Engineers Talk Governance podcast, due diligence engineers and Co-Directors at R2A Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis, discuss town planning disasters and the need for consequence planning. 

This follows Gaye’s recent conference paper at the International Public Works Conference where she detailed the VCAT decision around the major hazard facility and the planning law associated with it. But in this podcast, they reflect on other natural hazards like floods, bushfires, dam breaks and how town planning can address (or fail to address) these before they happen.

The biggest question they ask is rather than a focus on recovery, why aren't we building resilience into our infrastructure and/or seeing how we, as a community, build to be able to withstand some of these disasters? And how this is a shift from thinking from risk planning to consequence planning. 

They also discuss the mismatch between town planning requirements and WHS/OHS legislation. 

If you’d like to learn more about Richard & Gaye’s work, head to R2A at https://www.r2a.com.au