Select Committee on Defence Written Evidence


Memorandum from the Centre for Hazard and Risk Management (CHaRM)

  1.  I am responding as Director of the Centre for Hazard and Risk Management (CHaRM) at Loughborough University, concerning the work of the centre which may be seen as relevant to the inquiry. CHaRM is an interdisciplinary centre concerned with occupational and organisation risk management on a very wide basis in the UK and overseas. The centre's work involves post-experience education and training in risk management, largely at postgraduate level and with an emphasis on part-time qualification courses, backed by applied research and consultancy.

  2.  CHaRM's academic staff include myself, Dr David Wenham, Dr Alistair Cheyne, Mrs Deborah Walker, Mr Tom Mulhall and Mr Mike Fray. Dr Wenham leads our course programme in the area of occupational health and safety, while Tom Mulhall directs our security management course programme. Mrs Walker leads on health and safety management research, supported by Dr Cheyne, while I cover environmental risk management, and professional development research, and Mike Fray focuses on risk control in the field of manual handling.

  3.  The CHaRM team cover a wide range of disciplines from chemistry to occupational psychology and have been pioneers in establishing important modern branches of risk management, including risk assessment, safety culture and climate, and behavioural safety. They have extremely wide work experience, and have acted as risk management consultants and trainers to a huge variety of work organisations across the private and public sectors over the past 30 years.

  4.  CHaRM staff have up-to-date insights into the work, organisational structures and cultures of the Armed Forces since we continually recruit students from this background. Only very recently we have recruited six members of the SAS onto our security management programme to enable them to qualify to Diploma/Masters level in this field before leaving the Army. I have, myself, recently attended public invitation presentations in the East Midlands by all three Armed Forces focussed on their roles, but especially on the challenges they face around recruitment, selection and induction of young people.

  5.  I have followed the issues around the deaths of young soldiers at Deepcut barracks at a distance, through the serious press. From this distance it has seemed to me that these deaths are likely to be indicative of deep seated structural, cultural and behavioural problems in the Armed Services in regard to the induction and development of young people. If this is the case then there will be no "quick fix" solution coming out of the Defence Committee's inquiry. There will be a need for research to identify the hazards and risks faced by these young people and those who supervise their development. This research will need to address hazards and risks which can be reduced by means of technological improvements, by improvements in systems of work to reduce risks, and by behavioural changes throughout the Armed Services aimed at reducing health and safety risks. There will be a need for much training and development in the Armed Forces arising from this research.

  6.  CHaRM has a great deal of expertise in conducting risk assessments in regard to all types of occupational risks in work organisations, from machinery hazards to occupational stress. We are also able to propose risk reduction strategies covering physical controls, safe systems of work and behavioural safety improvements.

  We are able to move from these proposals to organise management and professional training to help work organisations with the implementation of risk reduction plans. This training emphasises the principles of hazard identification, risk assessment risk control measures and their selection, the implementation of control measures, monitoring of their effectiveness and feedback to further assessment and control. The training is always set in the context of the work organisation to ensure that the relevance is perceived by trainees. The management of change features largely in the training programmes as unwillingness to change is most commonly the biggest barrier to improvements in risk management.

  7.  Many of our clients are especially taxed by the issue of how to develop their inexperienced, often young recruits to handle higher risk work without putting them at significant risk in the process. In the university world we are faced with this issue daily, given the flood of young people into our laboratories and workshops each year. All the work that we carry out is placed in the context of the Health and Safety at Work Act, with its requirement to reduce risks as far as is reasonably practicable. We argue that the risks to young, inexperienced people at work, or in training for work, is always higher than for older, more experienced people at work, and that risks control strategies must be orientated towards the knowledge, understanding, perceptions, values, attitudes and behaviours of these young people. There is a considerable onus on those responsible for their development to be closely attuned to these parameters at all times, so they must be trained in turn on how to ensure this.

  8.  In summary, I believe that CHaRM is able to support the inquiry by providing information and advice in regard to risk management, and in regard to the development of management and professional competences needed by those controlling the risk to young trainees in the Armed Forces. I would be willing to offer oral evidence, if required, in relationship to the matters outlined above.

Professor Geoff Chivers

Director

April 2004





 
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