Chemical Safety at Work - The Podcast

Ep. 18: Innovating Safety Standards in High-Risk Industries with Renton Parker

• Storemasta • Season 2 • Episode 18

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In this episode of Chemical Safety at Work, we’re joined by Renton Parker, Director of RiskCon Engineering, to discuss key issues in dangerous goods safety. Renton shares insights on the biggest risks facing Australian businesses, the importance of knowledge and education in managing hazardous chemicals, and real-world incidents that highlight the consequences of poor safety practices.

We also explore how businesses can stay compliant with evolving regulations, recent updates to mixed classes and segregation rules, and the role of new technology and software in managing risk.

Whether you’re a WHS professional, a business owner handling dangerous goods, or simply interested in chemical safety, this episode is packed with expert insights to help you improve workplace safety and compliance.

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Patrick Gee:

yeah, so thanks for joining us.

Renton Parker:

Rented, yeah, it's no problem. Happy to be here awesome.

Patrick Gee:

So what made you get into this industry?

Renton Parker:

uh, so I kind of fell in it. Really I did. I studied chemical engineering at university and through circumstances, I kind of wanted to stay in sydney and ultimately just applied for an environmental engineering role, which turned out to be a chemical engineering role in an environment team and, yeah, started working in that industry and enjoyed it, found it super interesting and engaging, and then just ultimately have continued on since.

Patrick Gee:

. So what does that mean? A chemical engineering role in an environment team. What does that look like?

Renton Parker:

So it was a large consultancy and so they break their teams down into environmental, mechanical mining, that sort of like very industry-based yep, and so I was just a chemical engineering role in a very niche portion of the team and it was just the environmental team. So that's why I was labeled environmental engineering role yep, and it was did not end up being that at all. Okay.

Patrick Gee:

And so from there, how did you end up to where you are now with Rescon?

Renton Parker:

Yeah, so ultimately, I've done the exact same role for 12 years now, went through a few different companies along the way and realised very early on that, because it was quite niche, there was a good opportunity to be able to start a company ourselves and ultimately ended up teaming up with my mentor to start RiskCon Engineering in 2018 or so, and we've been going six years and ultimately tried to help our customers and it seems to keep growing, so we'll keep on doing what we're doing. Yeah, awesome.

Patrick Gee:

And so how much has the company grown since you started it back in 2018?

Renton Parker:

Yep, so when we started in 2018, it was just myself and my mentor, who was also my business partner, and then, since then, we have grown to a team of 11 employees. There are eight full-time and three part-time employees.

Patrick Gee:

And what kind of industries do you mostly focus on?

Renton Parker:

Pretty much the whole sort of raft of chemical processing industries, so mining, warehousing and logistics, oil and gas, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, pretty much everything. Wherever there's a risk or chemicals being stored, there's some aspect of the skills that we, or our services, that we provide, that can be applied to those industries.

Nick Schatz:

So you've been in the industry for a few years now, obviously. Um, could you tell us a bit about the behaviors you've seen and attitudes towards safety in the industry?

Renton Parker:

yep. So, being consultants, we engage with industries or businesses that have some recognition of the risks that they face. Sometimes we get involved with on the back of like regulator involvement and so I guess we see a smaller portion of the total industry because they're people who are aware of the risks. There are a large portion of businesses or individuals that don't fully understand their risks and then are not managing them or not understanding that they need to manage them and so therefore don't interact with us, and yeah.

Patrick Gee:

What do you see as the biggest threat to australian businesses, in particular in terms of dangerous goods, right now?

Renton Parker:

yep. So that leads from the last question entirely. Knowledge Yep. So not everyone is taught about dangerous goods, for example, and then how the risks and hazards associated with those can play out in their business, so that results in hazards that are not identified and not managed. You also have the education side of things. So universities they don't have a big onus or focus on chemicals and chemical management and storage.

Patrick Gee:

So where does that push need to come from in order to get that knowledge to people?

Renton Parker:

Yeah, so under the regulations for each state, there is a requirement for employers to educate their employees. However, that doesn't necessarily extend to the educators. So our universities, and then even then universities, focus on, I guess, well-rounded education and tend to not get to the very specific components of it. So it's lacking in graduates when they go out to industry. They are also not aware of what they should be doing when it comes to looking at these sorts of hazards and risks.

Patrick Gee:

Yeah. Do you have any real-world examples of some incidents that have happened that you might have been brought in in response to, or you've seen awareness come up around after a certain incident's been made public, or something like that? Just an example of a specific incident.

Renton Parker:

Yep, so a big one that seems to keep cropping up is to do with static. So where you have flammable gases or liquids, there is potentially an atmosphere that can be ignited and while we have quite good control around fixed electrical installations, so the equipment that goes in there, it's designed to operate in those potentially hazardous zones. The part that seems to get missed or is misunderstood is around the static. So where you have a charge build up on a surface or clothing or equipment and then that discharges into that atmosphere and ignites it. And an example of that was a client had a mixing vessel which had been cleaned with a solvent and it was covered with a plastic covering to contain the flammable gas inside. The procedure was to earth that vessel before doing anything after that, and the particular employee forgot that part of the procedure and then remove the plastic covering, resulting in a discharge of electric or a spark, and that ignited the um, the vapor. Yep, fortunately he wasn't seriously injured, but but just a simple lapse of procedure resulted in a potentially significant incident.

Nick Schatz:

Yeah, I think you touched on the importance of knowledge and sharing that knowledge within the industry, but are there any other key improvements that we could make as a country to decrease the incidents and accidents that are happening?

Renton Parker:

There most definitely is. However, I would like to acknowledge that there is a lot of regulators who focus on all these individual components static DG, storage and handling that they're already doing an exceptional job to help industry and they are available for companies and businesses to engage with and actually get the help and assistance they have or they need. Similarly, there are organizations like the australasian institute of dangerous goods consultants, which provides a list of consultants and resources where businesses can go to gain this assistance. So, ultimately, it's understanding what you don't know and then seeking a knowledge gap, finding a consultant, talking to regulators that will help you improve your safety within your own business and industry.

Patrick Gee:

Yeah, sure, and are you seeing much adoption of new technology or innovation in dangerous goods safety?

Renton Parker:

Yep. So Storm Master offers various cabinets and particularly with battery charging. Batteries themselves have become quite um ubiquitous. They catch on fire and storing them appropriately is very beneficial, and so obviously storm master offers a good solution there. Around electrical safety, there are, that's very well understood. International standards are constantly being updated and developed to improve how the electrical equipment is being managed and minimizing those electrical hazards that occur with inflatable atmospheres. But overall, unless there's a new technology coming out, for example the new application of batteries or potentially hydrogen that may be developed in the future and becoming more spread out through industry, the old innovations are still very applicable. The hazards are well understood. So it's more so like when there is a new industry. That's when the innovative safety procedures and equipment will come in.

Patrick Gee:

What about in terms of software? I guess in terms of helping businesses or organisations manage their risk? When we go to work health and safety conferences, we're seeing more and more apps and AI products and things like that. Are you seeing that sort of technology and software becoming more useful in terms of mitigating risk?

Renton Parker:

Pot entially, it's definitely a better way of documenting your risk, but ultimately, the first step that one needs to undertake is identifying that risk or hazard, and you don't need significant technology to be able to do that. Once you have that understanding, you can then use these various apps and softwares to then, track document track and change.

Nick Schatz:

Yeah, so yeah, once the risk has been assessed, then using that software or technology to then track and keep a record of what's being done.

Renton Parker:

Yeah, exactly. So then you can develop schedules and maintenance schedules and procedures to track and manage your hazard. Yep schedules and procedures to track and manage your hazard. But yeah, in terms of the initiating points, it's just a good understanding and having good knowledge of the materials you're using or the process that you're adopting, and going through a rigorous hazard identification at the start and then following that through. Yeah, perfect.

Patrick Gee:

So in your business, how are you planning for the future in regard to DG and Hazchem hazard identification at the start and then following?

Renton Parker:

that through? Yeah, perfect. So in your business, how are you planning for the future in regard to DG and HazCam? Yep, so we like to be involved in industry and so we aim to have representatives on standards committees, so that way we're helping develop those standards and then also having a good understanding of where they are going and how they've been updated so that we can help our clients and the industries we work in stay up to date.

Patrick Gee:

So can you run us through a bit of how those standards, the development of those standards, is informed and generated?

Renton Parker:

Yeah, so there's a standards committee and then they get a list of the standards that are upcoming to either be updated or reissued, and if they then are selected to be updated, they form a committee of like a working group of consultants, people from industry, people involved in fire protection, essentially just a well-rounded group that has experience with the standard and then has also experience with industry and how the standards have been applied. And the standard is just you go through the standard and fix up things that are lacking or are not clear, and then as a group you kind of work through them.

Renton Parker:

And then they get issued as a draft to allow industry and businesses to comment on, and then you go back through and address each of the comments that are received and ultimately that results in the completed standard, which is then published and available for everyone to access yeah great.

Nick Schatz:

So there has recently been an update to around mixed classes and segregation. What should people be aware of?

Renton Parker:

yep. So the the previous separation table was quite generic in nature. While it provided helpful knowledge in terms of three meter separation, five meter separation, it didn't acknowledge the nuance of different chemicals, and so the separation table has been updated to provide that nuance,

Patrick Gee:

highlighting

Renton Parker:

which classes may generally be able to be stored together or with a little bit of separation, compared to ones that definitely cannot be, and essentially, it's directing you to refer to the safety data sheets and obtain that knowledge when there are DG classes that might not interact.

Patrick Gee:

Yep. S o each product, there's a whole spectrum of different levels of risk or compatibility.

Renton Parker:

Yeah, exactly. And then the safety data sheets normally have that knowledge or that information and you can review them for incompatibilities between the specific products you're storing, rather than just looking at a generic class of class 3 and class 5 and saying, oh, that can or cannot be stored together. Essentially, yeah, just requiring you to do more work to confirm that what you're doing is safe.

Patrick Gee:

Putting the onus and the due diligence back onto the individual PCBU, or yeah?

Renton Parker:

Yeah, exactly.

Nick Schatz:

You were talking before about how there are a lot of resources out there and there are a lot of groups of people willing to help and willing to share that knowledge and that it's really up to the individual businesses and business owners to seek out that information. And obviously everyone lives busy lives and businesses is busy, but what sort of people and what sort of businesses do you find are the ones who are proactive in reaching out, if that makes sense, or is there some sort of common theme? Is there sometimes that? Is it people who have? Is it businesses who have experienced a accident and then they reach out that next time or a close miss?

Renton Parker:

Yeah, so generally it seems to be industries that are emerging that have had incidents at their sites, and then the regulator tends to do a sort of like an audit of those industries, because they've identified that these things keep occurring. So they attend the sites and then that is when there will be a big influx of people seeking advice from us.

Patrick Gee:

So some of the older industries. The knowledge is kind of well-known and well-circulated within the industry of the risk.

Renton Parker:

It's kind of well understood.

Patrick Gee:

So what's 2025 got in store for RISC-Con?

Renton Parker:

So we've been doing lots of distillery projects recently and renewable energy. So that just seems to be where our industry has grown, where our expertise is at the moment. But who knows, it seems to change year to year. Every few years there seems to be a new emerging technology and yeah, yeah. So we'll just see whether you takes us yep, awesome.

Patrick Gee:

Well, thanks very much for joining us on the podcast. It's been great to have you. Uh, we've had your colleague jason on in the past, so working our way through the whole company, so no thanks very much.

Renton Parker:

Yeah, no, it was great to be here. Thanks for the the good questions and hopefully it's been a good time.

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