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PODCAST

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance

Richard Robinson & Gaye Francis

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

technology management

All Episodes

11:25

Hazard & Risk versus Threat & Vulnerability - Top...

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/10/04

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 m...

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17:44

Update: New Zealand’s Health & Safety at Work...

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/09/27

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 inte...

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11:57

Risk, Uncertainty & Hallucinations

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/09/20

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 wi...

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12:22

Reactive vs Proactive Due Diligence - What does R2A...

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/09/13

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 explai...

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12:44

Elimination Has Its Own Hierarchy Of Control

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/09/06

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 ...

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12:51

Criticality & Control and Pink Elephants

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/08/30

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 ...

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11:27

Season 7 Wrap: The Growing Divide of Moral Imperative...

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/05/24

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 app...

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13:22

Risk Curve: Modelling the “Ideal” Hazard

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/05/17

Drop us a note In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the mathematics behind risk modelling and why relying on heat maps for decision-making can have limitations. Richard and Gaye explore the concept of the "ideal" hazard risk curve, unpacking why every hazard carries its own unique risk profile rather than a neat line of constant risk. Drawing on Heinrich's accident triangle and the hyperbolic relationship between...

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12:51

How Information Sharing Has Changed: Part 2 The...

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/05/10

Drop us a note In the second of two episodes of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance on How Information Sharing has Changed, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss how the Public Sphere has evolved and what it ultimately means for SFAIRP. Richard starts the chat outlining the work of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, tracing the journey of public discourse from coffee houses through to commercially-driven newspapers and media moguls, to today's podcast landscape. ...

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12:14

How Information Sharing Has Changed: Part 1 SFAIRP...

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/05/03

Drop us a note In this first of two episodes of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis explore how the SFAIRP principle (So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable) applies to managing internet risk. Richard explains R2A's journey with data security, from backing up to CDs and running an in-house server, to shifting to cloud hosting during Melbourne's COVID lockdowns, and ultimately landing on an offline-first approach that keeps them and sensitive...

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13:55

Cunning vs Smart in Health & Safety

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/04/26

In this episode of Risk!Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis explore organisational Cunning versus Smart and why it matters deeply for health, safety, and governance. Richard draws on decades of observing large organisations and argues that the people who rise to the top aren't always the most competent, they're often the most cunning. But cunning alone isn't enough. The real sweet spot, what Richard calls wisdom, is the rare combination of inte...

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16:00

The Use of Ignorance in Health & Safety Decisions

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/04/19

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis explore the use of ignorance in health and safety decisions and how it’s being used to not make decisions and not deliver the best safety outcomes for organisations. Richard and Gaye examine the growing trend of shorter board tenures and how this lack of long-term intellectual property can affect diligent decisions, especially when directors lack deep familiarity with the technical ha...

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13:06

Delaying Decisions to Avoid SFAIRP

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/03/29

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss Delaying Decisions to avoid SFAIRP (So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable). Their conversation covers: if lack of a decision is the result of ignorance and poor governance rather than deliberate strategyhow the elimination option often gets tested far too late in the design processwhy briefing board members and their legal counsel on WHS legislation obligations is often what fin...

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16:10

New Zealand's Health & Safety Amendment Bill —...

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/03/22

In this episode, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss New Zealand's Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill and explore why New Zealand is leading the in workplace health and safety. They break down the key changes in the amendment, including a sharper focus on critical risk and what this means for both large organisations and small PCBUs. The conversation touches on the real-world prosecutions that appear to have motivated the reform, including the White I...

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13:31

Resilient Infrastructure, Risk & Adaptation Strategies

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/03/15

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss Resilient Infrastructure, Risk & Adaptation Strategies. Following their attendance at the recent forum hosted by Engineers Australia's Risk Engineering Society and the Institute of Strategic Risk Management they unpack the big questions it raised about resilient infrastructure. From Victorian bushfires to the Dreamworld tragedy, to Finland's invasion-proof subways, they ex...

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12:43

To Grok or Not? Using AI for Risk Management &...

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/03/08

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis how AI in Risk Management? Richard begins with a deep-dive into how large language models work, and where they fall short. He explains why AI systems are sophisticated inference engines rather than true reasoning machines, and why that distinction matters enormously for high-stakes decision-making and risk management. The conversation covers the parallels between AI and Monte Carlo si...

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12:18

SFAIRP: Moral Imperative vs Commercial Reality

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2026/03/01

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss this season’s theme of SFAIRP: Moral Imperative versus Commercial Reality and that SFAIRP is hard. They discuss the tension between the legal and moral weight of “so far as is reasonably practicable” and the commercial pressures organisations face every day, including: How SFAIRP is an objective test, but objective to whom, and determined when?Why leaving the "i" out of ...

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13:38

Season 6 Wrap: SFAIRP Complexities

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2025/12/14

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis wrap up Season 6 and the theme of SFAIRP complexities. Key season highlights they revisit: Three essential components of SFAIRP: "As Far", "As Is", and “Reasonably Practicable”,Confusion around hierarchy of controls, Contradictions between WHS Legislation (OHS Act in Victoria) and planning and safety law.Watch out for 2026 for Season 7. For further information on Richard and Gaye...

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12:41

Two Types of Regulators

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2025/12/07

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the two types of Regulators. They outline two fundamentally different regulatory philosophies: regulators who view prosecutions as a measure of success versus those who see them as a measure of failure. The discussion examines how the "so far as is reasonably practicable" (SFAIRP) framework has shifted the burden of proof, making it harder for some regulators to secure convict...

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10:31

Psychosocial Hazards in the Workplace Regulations

Risk! Engineers Talk Governance ·

2025/12/01

In this special episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss psychosocial hazards in the workplace and the newly introduced Victorian Occupational Health and Safety (Psychosocial Health) Regulations 2025, which came into effect on 1 December. They explain that the new regulations largely re-states existing Occupational Health and Safety legislation requirements to identify, eliminate, and reduce such hazards as far as reasonably...

en-au

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