Chairman's Introduction

Sadly, Edmund Hambly died soon after this conference took place. His opening remarks were recorded and are reproduced below.

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen. Firstly I am delighted to welcome you all here on behalf of both the organisers of the conference and the Institution. I am Edmund Hambly and will be the chairman for all of today. I've been asked to say a few words of introduction by Malcolm James of the HSE and I hope they set the conference off in the direction that he, as a prime mover of the conference, is hoping.

Anyway, my understanding is that this conference is to be productive, it is to help the HSE produce a booklet of guidance for all of us. Therefore, it is very important that we have a constructive debate about how we find our way forwards with the problems of trying to make risk management a productive rather than backward-looking exercise. Malcolm has coined the term Engineering Consequence Design. In other words, a process in which we look forward at every stage in the design to the problems of construction, operation, maintenance and removal of the facilities that we are designing.