Category: Blog

Richard Coleman, Former General Manager HSE of Asciano delivered the closing keynote presentation of the 2017 OHS Leaders Summit Australia on ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine’. In this presentation, Richard discussed aspects of the key drivers of change for the OHS profession. These included changes to the organisation and structure of work; digital and technological disruption; and global political trends. Richard also made the case that the OHS profession is likely to be both (a) one of the most personally disrupted professions, as our jobs disappear; and (b) the biggest beneficiaries, as our aims are increasingly met. 

After nearly 30 years in Executive Safety, HR and Operational roles, Richard Coleman has built a wealth of experience about what works and what doesn’t work in changing organisational culture. His passions and interests now lie in the intersection between the on-rushing digitisation of work, organisational capability and the executive role in riding and steering those changes.

Richard’s closing keynote presentation capped off a stellar two days of special guests delivering incredible presentations, discussions, workshops and roundtables at what was the best OHS Leaders Summit in the event’s history.

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The Emerging Leaders Panel discussion at the OHS Leaders Summit Australia attracted much interest from the audience as they got to hear from four up-and-coming high performers within the OHS community share their experiences. The panellists touched on what they see as critical and how they envisage their career paths within the OHS industry will look like. They also discussed what challenges they see in work that we might be missing and how do we hear the ‘young voices’ within the OHS industry today.

Moderator:

Richard Coleman, Former General Manager HSE, Asciano

Panellists:

Vanessa Vozzo, Leader WHS, ANSTO

Philippe Brule, HSSEQ Advisor, Cushman & Wakefield

Michelle Purchase, Safety Business Advisory SA/NT, Australia Post

Ben Kirkbride, HSE Manager, Laing O’Rourke

Vanessa is Leader of WHS Compliance & Projects at ANSTO. She provides specialist WHS Advice to a portfolio of business units. Vanessa drives an audit program to provide assurance that the ANSTO’s WHS Management System meets regulatory obligations and is a Project Manager for key WHS initiatives. Commencing at ANSTO in May 2016, she has over six years’ of experience in Work Health & Safety. Vanessa is a Certified Generalist OHS Professional of the Safety Institute of Australia (SIA). Vanessa holds a MSc (OHS) and a BCom(Dean’s School) HRM, Business Law and is an accredited lead WHS auditor.

Phillipe is HSSE Advisor to corporate, institutional, state and local government contracts throughout NSW and QLD.

Michelle is responsible for providing safety technical advice for managers and supervisors within the organisation. Michelle’s support role sees her empowering managers to make decisions to reduce the exposure to harm of their workers. Michelle has 10 year experience within the Safety, Workers Compensation and Injury Management industry, with her tertiary education including a Bachelor of Health Science majoring in Public Health and a Graduate Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety.

Ben is a proven HSE Professional with 13 years’ experience in iconic multi-site organisations in a range of disciplines, inclusive of the construction, civil, telecommunications, minerals and industrial, social and road infrastructure and maintenance, logistics and rail industries. The majority of Ben’s experience sits within all facets of commercial construction and 11 years in directly managing work, health and safety. Ben is a currently employed with Laing O’Rourke as a Project Health, Safety and Environment Lead, overseeing multiple iconic projects in Sydney.

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David Schelbach, Global Manager – Safety, Health and Environment at IXOM hosted a roundtable discussion at the OHS Leaders Summit Australia on ‘Critical risk: Manage it, or it will manage you!’ Personal safety, process safety, regulatory compliance, mental health, sustainability, hazardous chemicals, aging workforce? What are your critical risks? How do you assess them? How do you manage them? How effective are your controls or safe guards? How do you know? This roundtable discussion explored how one organisation tackled understanding and integrating its approach to critical risk management and improving its assurance of what really matters, critical controls!

David is Global Manager – Safety, Health and Environment at IXOM. His remit spans corporate strategy and policy through to front line SH&E program deployment. He began his career as a chemical engineer and now has 15 years industry experience, all of it with Orica. The first seven years were dedicated to large scale petrochemical manufacturing, technology management and process safety. David has spent the majority of his career working for Orica in North America, with his most senior role being Vice President of Sustainability, before returning to Australia 2011, as the Global General Manager for SH&E for Orica’s Ground support business, and ultimately subsequently General Manager Safety and Health for Orica globally. David’s passion is to look at safety differently, acknowledge complexity and look for answers to how we make more things go right, rather than less things go wrong.

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Jason Brooks, Chief Operating Officer at Grenof Water Technologies hosted a roundtable discussion on ‘Safety leadership and behaviours – What doesn’t work’ at the 2017 OHS Leaders Summit Australia. In this session Jason discussed experiences, strategies, tactics and approaches that haven’t worked. We sometimes forget to learn from those things that haven’t worked. This session also allowed delegates to share things that haven’t worked which in turn allowed the group to collectively discuss the approaches. This roundtable discussion covered topics such as: what things haven’t worked and why; what can be learnt from these approaches; what makes strategies and tactics work; and wWhat we can learn from these experiences and what does it mean for me?

Jason is the Chief Operating Officer overseeing all of Grenof Water’s Operations. Jason overseas Operations, SHEQ, Business Development and is responsible for the implementation of the management system.

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International guest speaker, Professor Patrick Hudson from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, hosted a roundtable discussion at the OHS Leaders Summit Australia on ‘Just and fair culture – compliance and leadership’. This workshop examined why people break the rules and what you can do about it, using a state-of-the-art model – Meeting Expectations. This model not only represents the most recent thinking about non-compliance, but also can be integrated into a model for Safety leadership. The workshop also explored the roles and responsibilities of workers, supervisors and management.

Patrick is a psychologist with wide experience of safety and management in a variety of high-hazard industries. Patrick has worked with the Oil and Gas sector, both upstream and downstream, commercial and military aviation, shipping, mining and hospital medicine. Patrick was one of the developers of the Tripod model for Shell, together with Jim Reason and Willem Wagenaar, better known as the Swiss Cheese model. Patrick was part of Shell’s team developing the theory of SMS in response to Piper Alpha and am now involved in teaching and developing SMS concepts in Civil Aviation, primarily in Asia and Australasia. Patrick developed the HSE Culture ladder, together with Dianne Parker and is now working on improving concepts of risk analysis in hospital medicine, transferring knowledge and experience between industries. Patrick is an Emeritus Professor at Delft University of Technology in The Human Factor in Safety at the Department of Safety Science. His specialties include: Psychology, aviation safety, Oil and Gas HSE, patient safety, Nuclear engineering, computer science, artificial intelligence, design.

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Group HSSE Manager at Viva Energy Australia, Fiona Murfitt, delivered a keynote presentation to delegates at the OHS Leaders Summit Australia on ‘Bridging the divide – OHS and process safety’. The occupational health and safety field is well established, with a number of professional bodies, undergraduate programs and a comprehensive body of knowledge. Conversely, the process safety field has evolved largely over the past 40 years as an engineering discipline, with a focus on engineering solutions.

Both fields utilise a risk management basis for decisions and actions. But both fields still largely operate independently of each other. There is much to be learned from sharing knowledge and responsible collaboration to deliver safer plants and operations from an OHS and a process safety perspective. This keynote presenation explored how we can bridge the divide between OHS and process safety to achieve better safety outcomes. This includes better education and information flow between both professions as well as leveraging off existing systems to advance process safety. 

Fiona is the Group Manager for Health (incl Industrial Hygiene), Security, Safety and Environment (HSSE) for Viva Energy Australia. Managing and leading a team of professionals, she reports directly to the CEO and has accountabilities that includes the delivery of the strategic direction of HSSE across the business for continual improvement, the management of the behavioural and cognitive safety leadership approach, the provision of robust Assurance programmes and return to work, and the provision of HSSE subject matter expertise to support the ongoing management of HSSE across the business. Fiona’s career has predominantly focused on working within high-risk operations, with more than fifteen years working within the oil and gas industry. She has held positions in Safety (HSSE), Contractor Management and Risk Management and also spent time as Director for Australia, NZ & Pacific Islands for Dupont’s consulting arm helping companies build safer more efficient and reliable operations. Her passion around safety, performance and culture change came after a family member – Kevin was killed at work. Kevin was a contractor working on a shutdown at a refinery and the impacts to the family and friends have left a deep impression. As such, being able to influence the improvement of an organisation’s performance in a safe and sustainable way holds a deeply personal connection for her.

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Partners at Herbert Smith Freehills – Harold Downes and Steve Bell collaborate and conduct a workshop at the OHS Leaders Summit Australia on ‘4 Hot Topics’. Both Harold and Steve covered four topics in 5 minutes each and provided for what was an in-depth and robust workshop packed with engagement from the delegates in attendance. The four topics covered were: the use and abuse of legal privilege; trends around Australia; Section 27 and due diligence; and contractor management.

Harold is currently a Partner at Herbert Smith Freehills specialising in strategic planning and advice for all aspects of employee relations, particularly workplace health and safety.

Steve is currently a Partner at Herbert Smith Freehills and advises and represents businesses in relation to all aspects of safety regulatory law.

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Geoff Hoad, Director Workplace Health and Safety at Optus delivers a keynote presentation at the OHS Leaders Summit Australia on ‘ISO45001 White elephant or game changer?’ This presentation discussed how ISO45001 will replace AS4801 and in doing so will create some interesting challenges and opportunities for organisations who feel that their existing system approach is limiting and bureaucratic. What safety systems are and how they should work are two different things and this is the essence of how the two standards will work. Safety is often seen as an add-on and this position will become untenable as a position going forward. How the profession survives in the future will become one of the big questions we will face. ISO45001 and how it works may be part of that answer. 

Geoff is an Executive HSE and Operational Risk specialist with National and International experience. Capable business leader who can engage and execute change. Influences and builds networks which support identification and control exposures related to Health and Safety, operations, legal compliance and reputation. Able to develop strategy, create and maintain systems, ensure compliance and drive safety performance. Effective and transformational leader. Strong advocate for doing Safety Differently and driving innovation. His specialties include: National and International Health and Safety management.Organisational Development, Strategy, Systems, Compliance and Business Performance, Risk Management, Business Continuity, Risk Assessment, Risk Management, ISO 9000, ISO 14000, OHSAS 18000, Management Systems, AS4801, EHS Information Technology, EHS Auditing, Machinery Safety, Six Sigma Black Belt, Sustainability.

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Amanda Wang Valentine, CEO and Founder of enHone and Jack Sahl, Chief EHS Advisor at enHone deliver the breakfast keynote webinar at the OHS Leaders Summit Australia on ‘Strengthening Workers’ Innate Attention to Optimise Safety and Productivity Outcome’. The presentation covered: understanding how the brain works in terms of various states of attention and inattention; how attention might impact safety and performance; and the potential benefits of strengthening operators’ innate attentional skills in terms of safety and operations.

Amanda is an international executive with broad based experience in finance and early stage business development, sales, building distribution partnerships, team recruitment and alignment, and operations. Specializing in applied science and commercialization strategies with an interest in creating healthcare, wellness and self-improvement technologies, including VR/AR, that can help a large market. Amanda brings a holistic perspective and value to companies that are looking to grow – whether you’re at an early stage or looking to scale, Amanda can help with defining product market fit, business models, customer development and customer feedback and secure initial customers in a new B2B sector. Amanda works alongside you to secure sales and distribution partnerships and build the infrastructure to support growth. With this, Amanda brings experience managing multiple projects at different stages over multiple territories.

Jack Sahl Ph.D. currently balances his work at scientific, technical, and environmental consulting firm Jack Sahl & Associates with his efforts as Executive Director of Friends of the Angeles Forest, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to improving nature experiences and supporting the US Forest Service as an official partner. He builds programs and manages projects while coordinating teams of proven management consultants, technical experts, project managers, and communication specialists aiming to deliver near- and long-term value for all clients.

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Rene van der Merwe, Head of Workplace Health and Safety at Qantas and Samantha Hall, Head of Health Assessment Services at Bodycare collaborated to host a roundtable discussion at the OHS Leaders Summit Australia on ‘The Right Fit Project’. The Right Fit Project is a collaboration between Qantas and Bodycare Workplace Solutions in order to provide key stakeholders in the business with a best practice framework for assessing and managing health and fitness for work requirements for employees at Qantas.

The aims of the project were to:

• Transform existing Group processes for assessing and managing initial and ongoing fitness for duty (FFD) against the inherent job requirements, with the aim of reducing initial and recurrent employee injuries.
• Define the role requirements, revise and validate the processes for assessing against them and develop a robust management framework for when those requirements are not able to be met.
• Address management of long term sickness due to personal illness or injury, and fitness record storage options for a more coordinated framework.

In this roundtable discussion, Rene and Samantha shared learnings relevant to the development and implementation of an effective and comprehensive fitness for work systems as they apply to high risk geographically spread and high risk workplaces.

Rene is currently the Head of Workplace Health and Safety for Qantas Group. Most recently René worked for Woolworths Supermarkets as the NSW Risk & Safety Manager, and was responsible for the project management and national roll out of the Physio Recovery program. Previously, René worked as the Global Program Manager Sustainability Advocacy for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Corporation, responsible for developing a corporate platform for Environmental, Health & Safety sustainability across four operating regions. She was also instrumental in the implementation and operationalising of the REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation of Chemicals) legislation across affected operational regions. Prior to her global role, René led targeted injury prevention programs in the South African manufacturing plant, focusing on employee engagement and empowerment, measuring success through lead indicators. Prior to Goodyear, she worked for Eveready Diversified Products as Integrated Systems Manager, responsible for implementing the first accredited, fully integrated ISO14001, ISO9001 and OHSAS18001 system in South Africa, back in 2005. René commenced her career as a Validation chemist at Aspen Pharmacare, where she had the privilege to form part of the research team for the first generic, anti-retroviral drug that was released within South Africa.

Samantha is the Head of Health Assessment Services at Bodycare Workplace Solutions. She oversees all pre-placement and periodic health assessments for the company and has more than 10 years occupational health experience, and holds tertiary qualifications in Physiotherapy, Ergonomics and OHS. Sam is passionate about workforce health risk management, and has worked with organisations across a wide range of industries including aviation, mining, manufacturing, construction, healthcare, and oil and gas.

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