5.4.1. Moving from Stage 3 to Stage 4

Moving from Stage 3 to Stage 4 involves the recognition that good risk management systems actually help people do their job rather than add additional work. This involves the following areas of improvement.

• Proactive competency and training approaches for risk management

• Proactive, systematic risk assessments considering adequacy of controls

• Being beyond legal compliance

• Openly shared outcomes of accident investigation and analysis

• Integrated monitoring and auditing.

A site at the Stage 3 should have a relatively effective risk management system. The system may still be only partially adopted by managers and supervisors but this issue is probably more about the compliance culture than the detail of the system. At Stage 4, the systems may not change greatly but there is much greater acceptance.

For example at Stage 3, regular, systematic risk assessment may be done as per a defined procedure. If this is effective for managers and supervisors they would evolve the procedure and the methods to more appropriately suit their specific decisions. This may occur because the manager or supervisor recognises that risk assessment actually helps them do their job.

Moving from Stage 3 to Stage 4 involves meeting the following milestones:

• Measuring the benefits of risk management systems and demonstrating to line managers.

• Evolving proactive competency and training approaches, carefully designed with a systematic approach considering suitability, needs and application of risk management processes.

• Evolving the proactive, systematic risk assessment based not only on the procedure but also the insight of the responsible managers and supervisors

• Moving well beyond legal compliance with a defined risk management system where compliance though complete is secondary to having systems that suit the site

• Openly sharing outcomes of accident investigation and analysis where investigation of potential high consequence events is actively pursued allowing for open and honest sharing of causal information

• Establishing integrated monitoring and auditing, again tuned to address the priority issues of the business as indicated by the managers and supervisors and workers that own the process.