Faith Wainwright, 2018 President of The Institution of Structural Engineers, launched CROSS-AUS (Confidential Reporting on Structural Safety – Australasia), a unique safety reporting scheme, during the Australasian Structural Engineering Conference in Adelaide on 26 September.
CROSS-AUS allows construction professionals to make confidential reports about structural failures and safety concerns.
CROSS-AUS is designed to share structural safety issues and help prevent future failures. The CROSS model uses the same confidential reporting techniques developed in the United States aviation sector to ensure that all identifiable details are kept completely confidential, while providing valuable insight into how safety issues occur.
Reports should be made to the CROSS-AUS website www.cross-aus.org.au where they will be published - after all identifiable details are removed – helping to facilitate knowledge-sharing and spur the development of safety improvement measures.
Faith Wainwright said:
“As professional engineers we have a profound duty to ensure the safety of all those who use the structures we design and build. Sharing feedback on near misses or concerns is not always easy and CROSS is a successful community platform to allow professionals to do this simply, without attributing blame.
“Newsletters provide expert insights for all, and the more reports we gather the better we can understand the extent and occurrence of safety issues. I would therefore encourage all those involved in construction activity to submit reports to CROSS-AUS.
“Learning across national boundaries is vital as frequently the experiences in one country are directly relevant to another. The CROSS model has operated successfully in the UK for many years, and we are working to expand as an international safety reporting scheme wherever we can.
“I would like to thank all our members like Mike Fordyce, Colin Caprani, Peter Ho, Phil Latham and David Lilley for making CROSS-AUS a reality. Combined with the already vital work of CROSS UK and its Director, Alistair Soane, we are making a truly international structural safety reporting scheme a reality.”
Mike Fordyce, Director of CROSS-AUS, said:
“The structural engineering community in Australia has shown considerable interest in CROSS for many years, with Australia recording the second highest number of hits on the CROSS website after the UK.
“With such demonstrable support and the recent establishment of CROSS International, members of the Australian Regional Group (ARG) of the Institution decided now was the time to set up CROSS in Australia. This we have achieved with the support and input from Dr Alastair Soane and Dr Paul McNulty, Director and Senior Engineer at Structural-Safety respectively - and we now look forward to using CROSS-AUS as the channel we can all use to share our experiences.”