The former chair of the Health and Safety Executive addressed the pressing topic during IMechE’s Hugh Ford Prestige Lecture last week (23 September). AI experts have recently warned of a credible threat to the future of humanity from the technologies, including Bill Gates warning that unchecked use could cause “a billion deaths”.
The technologies’ risks must be considered alongside their development, Dame Judith said. Developers “haven't done it, so we have to… accelerate the debate. We cannot just let it run rampant in the way it's doing at the moment. We have to get into a position where we're talking about responsible AI, not simply about doing it because we can.”
Delivered at the Westminster headquarters of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Dame Judith’s presentation asked if engineering and wider society are making progress on safety leadership. While improvements are undoubtedly being made, she warned attendees of the ever-present danger of forgetting the lessons of the past – “there are no new accidents, just different people making the same mistakes because they have failed to learn from others,” she said.
The talk covered her leadership of the post-Grenfell review of building and fire safety regulations, which led to the creation of the Building Safety Regulator. Many people wanted to only focus on removing dangerous building cladding after the tragedy that took the lives of 72 people, she claimed, which she agreed needed to be done.
But “jumping to that simple conclusion gets in the way of uncovering and understanding the real root causes… what we uncovered were systemic and cultural failures just about everywhere I looked. I found a highly prescriptive set of rules, but with little or no enforcement. No one really understanding what was and was not important.”
She continued: “Perhaps the biggest shock for me was the extent to which people who were part of the system knew before Grenfell that the system was broken and that corners were being cut – what I called in my report the ‘race to the bottom’. Individual roles saw their tasks very much in isolation, but with no real connection to the overriding purpose. No one felt connected to that commitment to provide safe buildings for people to live and work in.”
With the 10-year anniversary of the fire approaching in June next year, Dame Judith said the legacy for survivors and family members has to be that the sector has changed for the better.
Recent reforms include new responsibilities for manufacturers and construction firms to ensure the use of safe products, with potential prison sentences if they fail to comply. The government has also set out requirements for product safety assessments and clear labelling, and new public sector testing capacity.
“A great deal has changed, but there is still so much more to do. That sense of a journey of continuous improvement and never becoming complacent must be embedded,” said Dame Judith, who completed the independent review in one year but is still “very much involved”.
“I am determined to make a difference, and my mission is to make safety leadership a moral and ethical imperative for all engineers in every sector and discipline. There has never been a more important or more challenging time for us to step up and show our leadership, not just in traditional engineering disciplines and technologies, but also in the emerging areas,” she said.
“Our leadership needs to come from the heart. It needs to be genuine, and it needs to inspire and motivate others, and create the safety for them too to speak up.”
Dame Judith referred to a talk by John Bresland, former chair of the US Chemical Safety Board, in which he said that safety leadership “often comes down to making a choice between decisions that are expedient and what people want to hear, versus making unpopular decisions that may well be career-limiting in the short term, but which enable you to live with yourself.”
She added: “That is how we earn trust, and build trust and confidence to enable us all as engineers to do the many wonderful things we do that benefit society… sometimes doing what is right will mean ignoring advice from others.”
Diversity also has a key role to play in a safer society, she said, drawing on her personal experience as one of only four girls in her engineering year group at Imperial College London. “One of my strong memories of those days, back in the ‘70s, was of feeling very much in the minority… I lost count of the number of times my fellow male students asked me why I was there at all, and what made me think that girls could become engineers?”
She continued: “It was only in the years that followed that I learned that that sense of being different and realising that I actually thought differently was a great strength, not a weakness. It has enabled me to challenge many norms and to play a part in driving lasting change across the whole engineering profession.”
Diversity and inclusion are therefore not just about improving statistics and closing pay gaps, she said. “Safety, diversity, inclusion are not separate subjects; neither are they add-ons. They are integral to being good leaders and fulfilling our purpose as engineers in delivering solutions which provide enormous benefit to society… Delivering benefit to society means all of society, not just those that look and think like you do.”
The presentation concluded with a rallying cry: “Don't keep waiting for government and regulators to tell you what the rules are before you act. It is your job, and your responsibility as a professional, to stand up for moral and ethical good practice in your profession. That's when you will be a real leader and a role model.”
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.