Safety professionals and the clerk-skill led bureaucracy
There is something about safety which I have learnt after so many years of seafaring . That , the very concept of safety by its nature is pitched against the business profits. Look at all the safety items you see around yourself on the Merchant ships. The lifeboats, the liferafts, the EPIRBS, the SARTs, ...you name it, everything. Have you ever considered the worth of these items from the point of view of a finance manager? If you ever do, you will notice that all of these items are a waste of money, a reduction in the profits of the business. The challenge of all the argument that come to promote the cause of Safety is that they deal in the imaginary and unseen, unheard events for the finance manager and other non-seagoing people. So it is always difficult to argue out how something is important, particularly when the argument have to contest their battle against the business profits by using scenarios which they may have hardly experienced from the comforts of their offices...