28 episodes
Risk! Engineers Talk Governance Richard Robinson & Gaye Francis
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- Technology
Due Diligence and Risk Engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss governance in an engineering context.Richard & Gaye are co-directors at R2A and have seen the risk business industry become very complex. The OHS/WHS 'business', in particular, has turned into an industry, that appears to be costing an awful lot of organisations an awful lot of money for very little result.
Richard & Gaye's point of difference is that they come from the Common Law viewpoint of what would be expected to be done in the event that something happens. Which is very, very different from just applying the risk management standard (for example). They combine common law and risk management to come to a due diligence process to make organisations look at what their risk issues are and, more importantly, what they have to have in place to manage these things.Due diligence is a governance exercise. You can't always be right, but what the courts demand of you is that you're always diligent
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Risk Appetite versus Zero Harm & the Confusion at Board levels
In this podcast episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the concept of risk appetite versus zero harm and the confusion it creates at board levels because they're trying to put all of their risk issues into a single statement.They discuss how a risk appetite is about balancing risk and reward, whereas zero harm is about nothing bad happening, and this gets uncomfortable when applying risk appetite to human safety. The outline the commonly applied risk p...
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Code of Practice & WHS/OHS Confusion
In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss Code of Practice and WHS/OHS confusion in relation to a presentation they delivered to the Dam Owners and Operators' Forum in Queensland recently, called "How do we do ALARP? Meeting a duty of care." They explain how the Code of Practice doesn’t align with WHS/OHS legislation and if you conduct an “augmented ALARP” as suggested by the ANCOLD (Australian National Committee on Large Dams) Gu...
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Art & Engineering - How being a great artist relates to the engineer's roles
In this episode of the Risk! Engineers Talk Governance podcast, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the relationship between art and engineering. They draw parallels between the roles of artists and engineers, highlighting the importance of composition, execution, and management in both fields. They outline the different types of engineers, such as creators, managers/consultants, and specialists, and the need for all three types in successful engineering organisations. Richar...
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Control & Reasonableness in WHS/OHS Legislation
In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss control and reasonableness in WHS/PHS legislation. They explain that the WHS/OHS legislation is a statutory statement of the common law duty of care and a defence against negligence, and that there’s two primary controls for negligence defence: no power defence (lack of control) and doing every reasonably practicable thing to address the matter. The aspect of control is built into the reasonable...
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R2A's Due Diligence Process - Why it works
In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss R2A's preferred approach to due diligence. They explain why they start with a top-down approach, usually starting with the military intelligence, threat and vulnerability technique. And how often organisations who have started with a bottom-up process have been floundering for some time, come to R2A to cut through the detail.Richard and Gaye also discuss:· &nb...
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Design trumps Risk Assessment - Our VCAT Hearing Success (as Expert Witnesses)
In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss their recent success (as Expert Witnesses) at VCAT (Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal) and how design trumps risk assessment. They discuss their case involving an application for a building permit in the outer safety zone of a major hazard facility. WorkCover advised against building two new dwellings due to increased population and societal risk. However, Richard and Gaye, as expert w...