[Peetwo]

FRMS/SMS a lip service exercise - Part VI

Before we unearth a couple more putrid but juicy morsels, the following BC article perfectly highlights the problems with just 'ticking the boxes' on FRMS and SMS in transport industries...  

$1.25 million payout for poor fatigue management - it’s time to get serious

Published on February 20, 2017
 

Ben Cook

Chief Executive Officer at Human and Systems Excellence

If the recent award of $1.25 million to a truck driver who crashed during a 430km drive home doesn’t ring alarm bells for Australian workplace standards, I don’t know what will.

The driver sued his employers based on unsafe work practice arising from forced fatigue, small recompense for a man living with structural brain damage for the rest of his life.

The incident importantly raises, not for the first time, the consistent lack of ownership for fatigue risk management (FRM) strategies across industries. I’m here to tell you we can do better.

Let’s look into the detail of the case. In the Supreme Court in Rockhampton, Justice McMeekin found both the mining company and its employment contractor liable for creating “risk by the insistence on consecutive 12-hour night shifts with…inevitable fatigue."

While the companies each denied this to their peril, Justice McMeekin found they owed a duty of care to the driver, a given under any functioning workplace health and safety law in this country. The sheer weight of mismanagement at both firms led the judge to conclude fatigue was at least a contributing cause in the accident.

So how were these companies allowed to get away with it to the point that a member of their staff has lost his livelihood? Over a number of years, I’ve been astounded by Australian businesses’ lack of proactive fatigue assurance, and their endemic incapacity to adequately monitor the effectiveness of their fatigue policies and risk controls.

While fatigue is just one hazard among a myriad that businesses need to manage, it is cases like this that show just how pivotal it is, and how important proper help can be.

Unfortunately, and compounding the issue, Australia has seen a parade of senior fatigue scientists (local gurus), with links to commercial fatigue management products. I’ve been to their sessions and what I can say is this: they’re very convincing. These so-called specialists use the words you want to hear, but trust me, they regularly deliver a false sense of security regarding your ability to actually enhance FRM.

Having seen these products consistently fail at bringing about safer workplaces, I want Australian businesses to get serious. I want our country to no longer accept the breakdown of trust in our workplaces, the endless policy and fatigue booklets, and the so-called ‘simple tools’ espoused by the safety industry gurus. They are just not good enough.

Instead, I want us to come together to build proper safety cultures into our corporate mechanisms. I want businesses to care about fatigue in their workplaces, not just manage it.

Having worked on fatigue management with elite teams including fighter combat instructors, I know first-hand the pragmatic application of FRM in an operational context, and how it can deliver the goods. From my extensive experience in this field I know that there is no effective quick fix solution to fatigue and if you seek one out you are more than likely to be disappointed in the result. Managing fatigue requires serious work in the short term for longer term success. I have learned that you can do more with less and when fatigue risk is managed well there is a concurrent improvement in the wellbeing of employees, which in turn brings with it increased productivity. This is not a zero-sum game.

My view is that if you truly want to deliver long-term, efficient work practices to combat fatigue, evidence-based FRM and enhanced sleep hygiene must be on the top of your list.

For best practice, I would look no further than real sleep and fatigue scientists like Dr Carmel Harrington, Dr Melissa Mallis, and Dr Malcolm Brenner – qualified and passionate professionals at the cutting edge of their fields. Every day I feel honoured to have them on my team at HSE3.

And to close this out, when I think what those experts could have done to help those companies to minimise the risk of this tragedy, I can’t help but feel enormously pained. With forethought, and a little management ownership, it’s easy to see how all of this could have been avoided. It’s a tragedy on so many levels.

If you are struggling with balancing the fatigue of your colleagues with the performance of your workplace, I want to hear from you sooner rather than later. As always, drop me a line at ben@hse3.com.au or simply message me on LinkedIn to start the conversation about improving your workplace.

Have a safe and happy week.

After that short but informative interlude...err back to digging -




After further digging in the Senate RRAT committee boneyard I have now come close to identifying some more PelAir morsels leftover from the 2012 inquiry...

To begin I am now waiting on confirmation that the 9 docs received on the 10 October 2012 were part of a package that was actually compiled by (what was then) M&M's department (DoIRD), on request from the Senator's - WTD??  

Although slightly miffed by this revelation, as I was hypothesising that they were submitted by a whistleblower, I can now see how this chain of evidence fits with the current disjointed bones on offer... 

P2 - hypotheticals X 2
 
Okay, so unbeknownst to both the ATSB & CASA executive management the DoIRD, at the request of the Senate RRAT committee, searches their databases for any relevant documents associated with the CASA ATSB parallel investigation of the VH-NGA ditching.

H1: Those documents are received by the Secretariat officer in charge of processing submissions. He/she decides that the nine docs contain sensitive information that needs the committee to review before being officially tabled.

On viewing the documents the committee decides that due to possible privacy and/or other sensitivity issues that the documents should be reviewed by the Minister's office and/or department for possible redaction. Although it is an extremely rare decision for a non-partisan committee to forward such documents to a government minister of the crown, this decision may have been made due to the nature of the documents and the many individual agency officers mentioned or able to be identified throughout those documents. 

However normally this vetting of documents by ministerial minions would still only take a couple of days to administer so we are still left with the question of how it was those documents were not officially tabled till 4 months after they were officially recorded as being received?

 H2: Those documents are received by the Secretariat officer in charge of processing submissions. He/she decides that the nine docs contain sensitive information that; a) needs to be bumped up the line for review by a superior officer. The superior officer is a mole that subsequently forwards the documents to the minister's office for further vetting and/or obfuscation for 4 months; b) needs to be forwarded to the minister's office for further vetting and/or obfuscation for 4 months i.e. the receiving officer is the mole.

(P2 comment - It could also be possible that the 9 documents had already been redacted by the DoIRD before being sent to the Senate RRAT committee.) 

Unfortunately we'll have to be patient as the key Secretariat personnel that can provide confirmation of H2 (all such committee actions/decisions are recorded) are still on hols...
  
For the record , in the course of an active Senate Inquiry, the current on duty Secretariat staff could not recall there ever being documents/submissions being mislaid or delayed on administrative grounds, for any longer than a week or two - certainly not for 16 weeks...
 

MTF...P2

Ps A big thank you to the Secretariat staff members Helen & Michael who have been extremely helpful with providing information on committee inquiry processes...