NTI's Risk Engineers - A Day in the Life

“We help people work on their business, not just in their business.”

That’s Kurt Herron’s mantra. And as one of NTI’s dedicated risk engineers, he knows what he’s talking about. His colleague Paul Bressan agrees:

“We’re not a regulator, we’re not there to hit businesses with a hammer… we provide solutions to a client. Having someone from industry doing that, I think, is part of our success.”

Paul’s not kidding when he says he’s “from industry”. He started at TNT and then worked at Toll Group, first in operations, then moved across to WHS and compliance (eventually including injury management and rehabilitation).

Kurt’s background is similar, having worked with several freight forwarders and shipping lines (he specialises in carriers, cargo and marinas).

Best of all, NTI offers risk engineer support to NTI insured clients who need them because we want to promote sound risk management and help all our client businesses succeed.

Risk engineering – a day in the life

It’s an impressive-sounding job description, but what does a risk engineer do? In a nutshell, it starts with identifying when a client might have a risk problem. 

Claims are an obvious indicator, but there are other factors, as Paul explained: “We also work with clients when they’ve experienced recent growth in their business, seen changes in their freight tasks or if they’re a potential new client whose history shows they’ve had insurance declined.”

Brokers are another avenue; if they’ve been having conversations with an NTI insured client about risk, they can access our risk engineering service. 

Once they know who they need to visit, our intrepid risk engineers hit the road, usually to visits several clients in an area. 

When on site, risk engineers speak with the relevant team members, walk around the premises and may assist in reviewing training documents, safety controls and other materials.

The visits aren’t too long, typically 60–90 minutes.

“We do appreciate how busy our clients are, particularly in the transport space”, Paul said. “We know how busy it can get.”

“It’s not one-size-fits-all activity”, Kurt said. “but we do have some standard areas we like to look at because we want to understand the business holistically.

“If I go out and see a transport company or a cargo owner or something that’s claims-related, I’ll talk to them about what they do, how they do it, why they do it the way they do. 

“And then I’ll look at subsections. I look at their people; I look at their assets, their maintenance, their cargo care, their technology to get an ‘umbrella’ view of the operation.”

Paul noted that it’s essential to talk to the right people. Usually, that’s “business owners, if it’s a smaller carrier. If they have safety or compliance people, I like them to be there as well”. 

“If it’s a bigger operation, it’s usually senior managers and operational people.”

Once the visit is done, it’s back to headquarters to assemble a report. That involves research, collaboration, brain-storming and drafting. The team takes time and care but can usually complete a report in the fortnight after a visit.  

“We generally stick to a timeframe of around 14 days”, Paul said. “Within that time, we like to have the report back in the broker’s hands.”

Once the broker has the report, they can go over it, present their client with it, and be ready for conversations around how to act on any recommendations, how they might impact insurance policies or premiums, and address any questions or concerns. 

Actionable, expert recommendations

Kurt emphasised that the reports aren’t about telling businesses to spend money on new equipment, training or processes (though they may recommend some or all of those measures if needed).

Instead, the idea is to get business owners and operators into the right mindset about risk and safety management.

“A lot of what I do is supply chain education”, he said. “Nowadays, a lot of businesses are doing a lot of shipping. You might have an online fashion retailer – their priorities revolve around being a great retailer.

“But they might not see themselves as a cargo owner. So we can help them understand the responsibilities and opportunities that come with that.”

Paul’s take is similar; it’s all about business improvement and understanding the chain of responsibility:

“In the heavy motor industry, the driver is often perceived to be at fault for incidents, which is a bit rough. There are lots of contributors, like road conditions, third parties [other drivers] and especially fatigue.

“A lot of those factors are part of the chain of responsibility – the responsibilities other parties, like schedulers and operations managers and site managers – have to manage risk.

“So we look at things like training and development, whether they’re doing competency standard assessments on their drivers, and what are the factors? And what’s the outcome, how are they managing that to better instruct or train their drivers?”

Supporting businesses to thrive

But we don’t stop at risk engineering reports, as Paul noted. NTI is heavily involved in the industry, providing education and support to all sizes and types of businesses.

“We go out to clients and ‘toolbox’ their drivers if need be. We go to a lot of industry presentations and conferences to keep up with the legislation and compliance standards. 

“We do industry-facing presentations as well, podcasts and video links … if there’s a particular topic, we can address it, like we did in 2022 for flood mitigation.”

Every business can use a helping hand, especially when the ‘help’ consists of experts like Paul and Kurt. And while every business has a degree of risk, there’s no reason to take on more than you need.