Vital to engage the workforce

“Critical to any of the success is getting the voice and engagement of the people who are actually doing the work and potentially exposed to the risks,” says Steele.

“You can bring the best bit of safety tech into the environment but if you don’t create engagement, interest, recognition and value among the people who are going to be using it in that space, you are going to fail.”

A key element about safety, he says, is aligning ‘workers imagined’ by the head office or the person writing down pristine safety procedures, with the ‘real’ work as done on the quayside in the middle of the night, in the middle of a gale, when everyone is rushing to get the job done and understanding what decisions get made in those circumstances.

For example, says Steele: “It doesn’t matter how good your tech is for your automation, it has to work with the people and situations and circumstances and be introduced in ways that are inclusive of processes and people.”

There are ‘heartfelt concerns’ about the use of automation relating to the security of employment, he adds. “You have to have genuine conversations with the people in the workplace if you want that process to work.”