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
Drop us a note In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss Culture, Criticality and Controls in terms of Ethics and Quality Assurance. Starting from Thomas Kuhn’s idea of paradigm shifts, they look at why Australia’s defence exports are largely defensive and how that protective instinct is reflected in WHS legislation. They also cover how splitting the world into narrow domains weakens decision-making, why the order of project success criteria changes stakeholder thinking, and why quality assurance is needed to confirm the controls actually work. If you’d like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we’d love to hear from you. Email admin@r2a.com.au . 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. Summary notes 00:41 – The three Cs: culture, criticality, controls 00:56 – Paradigms and Kuhn’s generational change 02:33 – Australia’s defensive defence exports 05:15 – WHS intent and the protective culture 06:19 – Siloed domains and due diligence 09:15 – Budget as the last success criterion 09:59 – Quality assurance: did controls work? 11:16 – Compulsory voting and embracing culture
October 18, 2026Episode 813 min
Co-operation versus Competition Policy in Project Due Diligence
Drop us a note In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss co-operation versus competition policy in project due diligence. Drawing on the postgraduate course they teach at Swinburne University, they explain why projects so often go wrong; that being the objective was never clearly articulated, or foreseeable problems were never built into it. They look at how trust, transparency and having the right people in the room let clients and contractors share risk instead of fighting over it, and what is lost when corporate memory walks out the door. If you’d like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we’d love to hear from you. Email admin@r2a.com.au . For further information on R2A, head to https://www.r2a.com.au , where you’ll also find booklets (store) and a sign-up for their quarterly newsletter to keep informed of our latest news and events. Timestamps 00:35 – Co-operation versus competition in projects 00:53 – Swinburne project due diligence course 01:16 – Why projects go wrong 03:58 – Trust as the basis of co-operation 05:07 – Right people in the room 06:00 – Trust-based builder example 09:45 – Corporate memory loss 11:30 – Transparency and shared protection 12:51 – Criticality and control: designing out risk
October 11, 2026Episode 712 min
Where can AI be used in Work Health & Safety (WHS/OHS)
Drop us a note 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 admin@r2a.com.au . 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
October 4, 2026Episode 611 min
Hazard & Risk versus Threat & Vulnerability - Top down, bottom up
Drop us a note 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 admin@r2a.com.au . 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
September 27, 2026Episode 517 min
Update: New Zealand’s Health & Safety at Work Amendment Bill (Received Royal Assent)
Drop us a note 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 admin@r2a.com.au . 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
September 20, 2026Episode 411 min
Risk, Uncertainty & Hallucinations
Drop us a note 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 admin@r2a.com.au . 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
September 13, 2026Episode 312 min
Reactive vs Proactive Due Diligence - What does R2A actually do?
Drop us a note 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 admin@r2a.com.au . 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.
September 6, 2026Episode 212 min
Elimination Has Its Own Hierarchy Of Control
Drop us a note 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 admin@r2a.com.au. 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.
August 30, 2026Episode 112 min
Criticality & Control and Pink Elephants
Drop us a note 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 admin@r2a.com.au . 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.
May 24, 2026Episode 1111 min
Season 7 Wrap: The Growing Divide of Moral Imperative & Commercial Reality in WHS
Drop us a note 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 admin@r2a.com.au . 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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