Pike River expert here as key speaker

Stewart Bell will be talking about how important leadership is in developing and maintaining a safe workplace environment.

One of the royal commissioners who investigated the Pike River Mine disaster will be the key presenter at a safety leadership conference and workshop in Tauranga next month.

Stewart Bell will be talking about how important leadership is in developing and maintaining a safe workplace environment, said Ant Lagan, whose company Teaming Up is organising the Deadly Serious Conference, to be held at the ASB Arena on February 13.

The one-day event aims to draw on lessons from safety failures at Pike River and to show how better application of safety processes can lead to improved business performance.

Mr Lagan has recently returned to the safety sector, having completed a non-compete agreement after selling a workplace safety consultancy four years ago. "There are many well-funded, well-structured organisations that are taking workplace safety seriously," said Mr Lagan.

"But there are still some large companies which are at risk and don't seem to have made the psychological shift of awareness I would have expected."

Mr Bell was formerly commissioner for mine safety and Health for Queensland and deputy director-general of the safety and health division of the Queensland Department of Employment, Economic Development and Innovation, responsible for the mining sector.

He now regularly documents the events leading to Pike River coal mine exploding, killing 29 miners and contractors, on November 19, 2010.

"Right from the initial concept of Pike, things were going wrong," he told an audience late last year, detailing the failings the commission had found in the running of the mine, especially with the management of methane in the mine.

"That is the worst gas monitoring system I've ever seen. What surprised us was that the explosion hadn't happened earlier."

Mr Bell will run the morning session. The afternoon session will be led by Tauranga-based safety trainer Keith "Scotty" Forsman-Jamieson, who works in the Taranaki oil and gas sector. Mr Forsman-Jamieson will focus on safety leadership strategies and will present a range of concepts, tools and resources employers can use to lead a positive change of workplace culture and employee engagement to improve safety.