A structured process to meet due diligence requirements

Are your critical controls actually working?

Join Adrian Hollamby, Otago Branch Manager, as he welcomes guest speaker Moni Hogg; drawing on recent real-world incidents and insights from the global Safety Differently community

Two recent incidents should make every safety leader pause.

In the KiwiRail investigation, the key finding wasn't simply human error. It was an over-reliance on people being perfect — with no effective engineering controls in place, administrative safeguards alone failed, leaving the system exposed.

At LaGuardia recently when the two pilots died, the same pattern: human error isn't the root cause of our operational risk. Our systemic reliance on human perfection is the risk.

These aren't isolated failures. They're a signal. Most organisations still have brittle systems — we function well under normal conditions, but sometimes lack adaptive capacity when things get complex or unexpected. What we're building toward is resilient systems with layered, adaptive controls and empowered teams that maintain safe performance even in novel situations.

The question is: how do we get there — and how do we measure whether we're actually moving in that direction?

What this session is about

A human-centred critical control is a control — barrier, safeguard, or mitigation — that explicitly recognises the role of people: their judgment, adaptability, limitations, and expertise in making the control effective under real-world conditions.

It's a fundamentally different lens for identifying system vulnerabilities — and meets ISO 31000 and HSW Act 2015 requirements more rigorously than conventional methods.

With Auckland Airport currently up for a Safeguard award using this approach, and Victoria University publishing her academic paper in an upcoming edition of the NZ Safety Journal, Moni will draw on perspectives from the global Safety Differently community.