NTI's Risk Engineers – Travelling Far and Wide

It’s been a busy year so far for our risk engineers, and they’ve spent plenty of time out of the office visiting businesses and helping them identify, understand and mitigate operational, supply chain and other risks. 

We recently caught up with Paul Bressan and Kurt Herron to learn about who they’ve seen and what they’ve learned; if you’d like to know more about how their visits work and what’s involved in being a risk engineer, check out our NTI's Risk Engineers - A Day in the Life blog post for more.

Paul Bressan: common patterns, common problems

Paul Bressan started with NTI in 2022, but he’s already made his mark – and racked up plenty of miles visiting transport businesses nationwide. 

 ‘I’ve spent a lot of time on the road this year travelling around South-East and regional Queensland, regional NSW, Melbourne and Perth. 

In his travels, Paul met with clients and brokers handling various transport tasks, including ‘general freight, dangerous goods, livestock, refrigerated, construction and landscaping supplies and heavy haulage.’

He saw some clear patterns emerge – patterns backed up by data from the NTI NTARC Major Crash Investigation 2022 Report. 

In metropolitan locations, he says problems were often ‘things like driving into objects or third-party influence,’ such as collisions caused by other road users.

Incident patterns were different for suburban, rural and remote businesses, such as a Perth-based transport company he visited a few weeks ago.

‘The most frequently asked questions, particularly in WA, were around road conditions,’ Paul said. 

‘A lot of rollovers are happening because of poor road conditions – corrugated roads, road shoulders crumbling and breaking away due to erosion and frequent use. Many roads are also very narrow.’

Fatigue was also a concern, as it’s a leading cause of SVUROs: single-vehicle untripped rollovers. 

The good news is that business owners and operators are aware of their challenges and eager to do what they can to make their businesses safer.

‘I was in Melbourne just before Perth, and I ended up spending half a day with a client,’ Paul said.

‘They were just so focused on the assessment. They were really engaged with the whole process,’ and wanted to learn how they could keep their drivers safe and their trucks on the road.

Kurt Herron: identifying and explaining risks

With a long career in shipping and logistics, Kurt has found welcome reception from businesses post-pandemic.

‘During COVID, everybody had to do things on Zoom,’ he said. ‘Now, when the option is Zoom or face-to-face, people absolutely want to see us face-to-face.’

 ‘We get a lot more engagement when we sit across the table from someone, and we see a lot more at their premises than we would if we were on the other end of a computer screen.’

So, like Paul, he’s been out on the road visiting businesses across NSW, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia. 

He met with companies handling all kinds of freight tasks, including refrigerated transport, general and express transport, car carriers, high-value cargo importers, online retailers, large-scale exporters, technology and electronics cargo owners, meat exporters, pharmaceutical companies and marina facility operators. 

Kurt particularly enjoyed spending time with online retailers, who don’t always see themselves as cargo owners. 

He helped them identify operational trends within their businesses and how to incorporate industry best practices. He also offered insights into industry operations and advice on minimising supply chain risks – an area of growing interest.

 ‘We do a lot of supply chain education,’ he said. ‘A lot of what we do is to say “These are some of the responsibilities you have. These are some of the rights you have” in the supply chain.’

Kurt says it’s a simple message – ‘The more control you have, the better the outcome because you get to make the decisions’ – and the businesses he visited took it to heart.

Making businesses safer and more profitable

Our Risk Engineers can help businesses become safer and more sustainable so that breakdowns, crashes, high staff turnover and other disruptions don’t undermine them. 

It’s in everyone’s best interest to get on with business as usual rather than dealing with problems.

So, if you’re interested in speaking with an NTI Risk Engineer, contact your NTI representative or insurance broker. We’d love to see you soon.