Health & Safety: Risk Management – Leading not Lagging

Session C8 | Day 2, Wed 26 Oct, 16.15-17.30 | Charter 2, Ground Floor

Session will look at how the sector can take health and safety and related risk management issues forward. It will look at experiences from other industries as well as emerging knowledge and lessons learned from within the sector to help us adopt a more informed and proactive position on managing complex risks.

• Chair and speaker: Chris Streatfeild, RenewableUK
• Laura Ellington, DNV
• Sebastian Blair, BST Solutions
• Tony Byrne, EA Technology Ltd

Chair and speaker: Chris Streatfeild, Director of Health and Safety, RenewableUK Strategic Update on Health & Safety Chris will provide a strategic update on Health & Safety. Chris Streatfeild is Director of Health and Safety at RenewableUK. Chris is a Chartered Member of IOSH (CMIOSH) and also a Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv). He has well over twenty five years of health and safety experience covering a range of industry sectors. He spent nearly 15 years working in the engineering and manufacturing sector followed by 5 years in legal services advising on a variety health, safety and environmental matters. Chris in his secretariat role at RenewableUK leads the coordination of the main H&S Strategy group and supporting workings groups. He also takes an active lead on behalf of the sector when championing the H&S interests and priorities for the sector with key stakeholders including regulators, the government and key industry partners. Chris is also member of several committees including BSI and European standards groups representing the interests of the renewable energy sector.

Speaker: Laura Ellington, Senior Consultant, DNV Risk Management Leading not Lagging – Learning from other Industries Effective risk management is perhaps the most important strategic management tool for de-risking large and complex projects.  Too many organisations rely heavily on failure data to monitor performance.  The consequence of this approach is that improvements or changes are only determined after something has gone wrong.  Leading indicators are actively used within major hazard industries but can equally be applied to the wind industry.  The use of leading performance indicators (over lagging indicators) employs a proactive approach to risk management and if applied correctly will monitor the effectiveness of control systems and provide advance warning of any developing weaknesses.  One key purpose of leading indicators is therefore to show the condition of risk control systems before accidents, incidents, harm, damage or failure occurs. Laura is a Senior Consultant in the Cleaner Energy & Utilities section of DNV. She has 10 years of experience across a range of industries including oil and gas, petrochemical, power generation, and pharmaceutical manufacturing and research. In the last 2 years, Laura has focused on providing safety engineering and risk management services to the UK offshore gas industry. Recent projects include designing a tertiary escape analysis tool, technical review of marine access and PPE requirements for small installations, and development of H&S resources for offshore wind. Laura is also a member of the RenewableUK Safety Performance & Communications committee.

Speaker: Sebastian Blair, BST Principal Consultant, BST Solutions Leading and Lagging Indicators: Rethinking Traditional Approaches to High-Severity and Fatal Events Over the past 10 years, a startling data pattern has emerged in which the rate of recordable injuries has declined considerably, whilst at the same time, the rate of serious injuries and fatalities is either flat or increasing. This trend is recognised across all industry groups around the world. How can this be? Analysis of high profile catastrophic events and also less prolific but equally tragic single fatality workplace incidents, illustrate that low recordable rates do not accurately predict the likelihood of serious events. The relative infrequency of fatalities and other serious events can give them an appearance of being random, of being beyond any reasonable degree of anticipation and prevention. In fact, the vast majority of these events result from exposures that are identifiable, measurable and manageable. The challenge is that traditional injury prevention paradigms are not sufficient for addressing the precursors that lead up to fatal and serious events. This presentation will examine the reasons behind this apparent dichotomy, introduce the concept of precursor events and present a new framework for leading an organisation to be free of serious and fatal injury events. Seb is an Executive Consultant and coach with global safety consulting firm, BST. Seb has over 10 years’ experience of leadership consulting in chemicals, maritime, oil and gas and construction. For the last five years Seb has specialised in organisational culture change with senior teams of major global companies and has a personal passion for the latest research on fatality prevention, leading the BST charge from Europe, as a member of the global study team. Working within this research team has informed Seb’s work on applying the recent learning and insight on fatality prevention across various industry sectors. Seb is currently working with three companies in the energy, chemical and utilities sectors, developing Serious Injury and Fatality Prevention strategies, as part of BST’s focus in this area.

Speaker: Tony Byrne, Senior Consultant, EA Technology Ltd Safety on Electrical Systems at Wind Farms This presentation will provide an overview of the requirements for the safe operation and maintenance of the low and high voltage electrical systems on windfarms, drawing on best practice developed in parallel industries such as electrical utilities. Tony Byrne is a Senior Consultant in the Network Asset Management (NAM) team.  He joined EA Technology Ltd in 2010 after 36 years with Electricity North West Ltd (formerly United Utilities) where he was involved in all aspects of the electricity distribution business.  For the last 15 years he has specialised on substation equipment from 132kV to LV covering all aspects of policy and procedures from specification to disposal, research and development, asset management, condition monitoring.  He carried out the investigation of all plant failures including reviewing policy and procedures, liaising with manufacturers and the Health & Safety Executive, and developing action plans to minimize the risk of further failures.  He was a member of the United Utilities team that won the 2007 IET Innovation in Engineering Award for Asset Management.