The competence gap
Most competence failures do not begin with incompetence. Instead, they begin with a gap between what someone is being asked to do and what they are currently equipped to handle. The difficulty is that this gap is often invisible. Qualifications remain the same, job titles do not change, and years of experience continue to accumulate. […]
The empty chair
Most decisions are made by the people who happen to be in the room. The challenge is that the people most affected by a decision are often somewhere else. They may be future users, residents, operators or members of the public. They may never meet the people making the decision. They may never know the […]
Accountability begins before failure
Accountability is often discussed after something has gone wrong. An incident occurs. An investigation begins. Questions are asked about who was responsible and what should have happened differently. The problem with this approach is that it treats accountability as a retrospective activity. True accountability begins much earlier. It appears when decisions are still being made […]
The conversation that never happened
When safety failures are investigated, attention often focuses on decisions, actions and technical causes. Less attention is given to conversations. Yet many incidents can be traced back to a conversation that never took place. A concern that was never raised. A question that was never asked. An assumption that was never challenged. The information likely […]
The grey area
We often imagine ethical decisions as a clear choice between right and wrong. In reality, most professional decisions are far less obvious. They tend to arrive as trade-offs between competing priorities: progress or caution, certainty or delay, efficiency or reassurance. The ethical challenge is rarely identifying the wrong answer. More often, it is recognising that […]
Who is affected by this decision even if they’re not in the room?
You make decisions that feel correct in the room, only to realise later that the people most affected were never represented in the conversation. Duty of care is often discussed in legal or contractual terms. It is framed around obligations, boundaries and liability, frequently examined after outcomes are known and responsibility is contested. In practice, […]
What does accountability look like when responsibility is shared but outcomes are serious?
Few things undermine trust faster than unclear ownership, when decisions are made, but no one feels personally accountable for their consequences. Accountability is often discussed after something has gone wrong. It appears in reviews, investigations and corrective actions, frequently framed around who was responsible and where failure occurred. In complex building safety contexts, this retrospective […]
How do you know when someone is genuinely competent and who decides?
One of your hardest challenges is knowing when confidence and experience are masking a quiet gap between what people are being asked to do and what they’re actually equipped to handle. Competence is one of the most relied-upon concepts in building safety and one of the least examined. It is often treated as something that […]
Why do safety failures so often trace back to conversations that never happened?
You only realise communication has failed when something goes wrong, not because people lacked information, but because the right conversations never happened. When safety incidents are examined closely, the root cause is rarely a lack of technical knowledge or formal process. More often, it is a breakdown in communication: an assumption left unchallenged, a concern […]
What does ethical behaviour look like when safety, pressure and commercial reality collide?
You are never explicitly asked to choose between right and wrong, you are asked to make decisions in grey areas where the ethical implications often only become clear later. Ethics is one of the most frequently referenced concepts in professional life and one of the least examined in practice. It is often spoken about as […]