With the greatest of respect, "the Problem" is that some companies appear to outwardly comply with rules, but internally they reward rule breakers and punish those who follow the rules.
If you give in and break the rules, you are effectively assuming complete responsibility for what happens next, and the company rightly will claim it has no liability for your accident. After all, you broke the rules didn't you?
You might like to consider the aftermath of an industrial accident that killed a lot of people. The proximate cause was poor working practices, training and systems of work.
The company involved immediately blamed the dead (and one surviving) plant operators for the accident. It took a Royal Commission to get at the truth.
Just Google "Longford Gas Plant Victoria" and read about decades of cost cutting, high workloads and a ruthless drive for profits that lead up to the fatal mistake.
Then there is the report about Regulation and enforcement here.
http://www.ieaust.org.au/policy/res/...on-failure.doc
It\'s too long to post. Selective quotes:
The nexus between regulation enforcement and catastrophic engineering failures
by Athol Yates, Senior Policy Analyst, Institution of Engineers Australia
ABSTRACT
The deaths caused by the 1999 Turkish earthquake, 2001 Indian earthquake, the 1997 Canberra hospital implosion and the 1998 Esso Longford gas plant explosion all have one thing in common.
Good regulations existed but they were not followed nor enforced.
Over the last 2 decades, the trends of de-regulation and self-conformance have effected most engineering activities. These trends have the potential to reduce costs, increase innovation and benefit the nation. But they also may lead to a decline in design quality, a failure to apply relevant codes and an increase in safety risks for the community.
The enforcement of engineering standards is a critical factor in ensuring that the reforms actually benefit society. This paper examines the evidence of the development and enforcement of engineering regulation, and finds that there is much to be concerned about.
About the author
Athol Yates, MA (Public Policy), BEng, Grad Dip Soviet Studies, is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Institution of Engineers. He has been a guidebook writer, journalist and engineer before joining the IEAust in 1996. He undertakes government lobbying and research to promote the interests of the engineering profession. His recent publications include Government as an informed buyer, The future of engineers in the public sector and Risk allocation in major WA projects. He project managed the 2001 Australian Infrastructure Report Card.
He is undertaking a PhD at the Australian National University on Government as an informed regulator of engineering, telecommunication and transport activities.
A common element to all these tragedies is a failure to enforce the existing regulations.
These examples are not unique. They are just the most tragic examples of regulatory enforcement failures. Any regulation system can suffer the same fate. Any can degenerate from effective to ineffectual without enforcement.
So the question is “Why were regulations not enforced?”. The question is simple but the answer is complex. There are a number of reasons of which the more important are:
1. consensual neglect
2. regulatory overload
3. cutting corners
4. inadequate resources for enforcement
5. penalties are little known
6. inappropriate enforcement mechanism
1 Consensual neglect
This occurs when companies know that the regulations are out of date, inappropriate or conflicting, and consequently, don’t follow them. The regulators are also aware of this and know that enforcing them will make them look silly. So both sides agree not to follow nor enforce them, and not say anything about it.
2 Regulatory overload
This occurs when companies are not meeting the relevant regulations because they are unaware of a recent change or what regulations apply. In a regulatory overload situation, the company is simply submerged in a confusing miasma of regulations, guidelines and codes of practice.
3 Cutting corners
This occurs when companies take a little short-cut here and there, which in themselves have little effect. But when these are all added up, the outcome can be fatally compromised. Nearly always, there is no deliberate decision to avoid meeting regulatory intent. They just occur because of incremental drift.
If the customer becomes a “dumb buyer”, the contractor may be more tempted to cut a few corners. These short-cuts are mostly related to quality. Examples are less detailing, lower quality materials and reduced sub-contractor inspection. Rarely are the short-cuts outside the legal interpretation of contracts or intended fraud.
Cut-throat competition also increases the pressure for injudicious corner cutting. This is a particular problem for the construction industry where lowest upfront cost is a major factor in tender awarding. It is aggravated by the “dumbing down of buyers”. Often a reputation for quality work and best practice is only valuable for getting onto the tender panel. After that, cost seems to be the major determinate. If the pressure to reduce cost and time becomes significant, then the temptation to not undertake the “should” clauses in guidelines may be too great. Another temptation may be to redefine the level of effort put into activities which use the adjective of “commensurate” or “appropriate”. For example, a risk assessment involving a day of work by a para-professional may fulfil the guideline requirement just as well as a week long assessment by a multi-disciplinary expert team. However, the outcome will invariably be completely different.
4 Inadequate resources for enforcement
Another reason for a lack of enforcement is that the regulator does not have the capability to actually enforce the regime. This capability may not be available because the regulator has insufficient skilled people, inadequate financial resources, ineffective powers, or an inappropriate detection strategy.
A typical response from government when the regulatory system shifts from prescriptive regulation to self-regulation is to reduce staff. This is justified on the basis that as certain work is no longer needed, such as sending inspectors to companies to identify breaches of prescriptive rules, neither are the staff. But when new functions are identified, such as sending inspectors to sites to ensure employers are providing a safe workplace and issuing prohibition or improvement notices, instead of increasing staff numbers, the tired mantra of doing more with less is trotted out.
5 Penalties are little known
People will not do what is expected of them unless incorrect behaviour is punished and is seen to be punished. This means that prosecutions for failing to comply actually have to occur and be seen to occur. Most prosecutions occur in the legal system with a suit for negligence or breach of contract, rather than being taken by governments for breaches of Acts, regulation, codes etc.
6 Inappropriate enforcement regime
Appropriate behaviour will only occur if the enforcement mechanism chosen by the people who developed the system is appropriate.
This is where the issue gets sticky ... talking of safety........
Many of these depend on market forces to regulate behaviour.
Market forces are appropriate if both buyers and sellers are informed and can weigh up the costs and benefits of different price and service offerings. However, in the case of buying a building which is structural appropriate for a particularly earthquake zone, I would have trouble believing most buyers would know what questions to ask.
Being an uninformed buyer undermines the power of market forces to produce appropriate behaviour. The greater the ignorance, the less impact market forces can have. Perception of risks is used by most customers to determine what their informed status should be for each purchase. Given that we are all poor at rating risks we have no experience with,
we are all particularly uninformed when it comes to evaluating low probability but high consequence events. Consequently we undervalue those solutions which offer best value for money for these events, while overvaluing others that do not offer such value for money.
Another limitation of the ability of market forces to produce appropriate behaviour is caused by the so-called moral hazard problem. Moral hazards exists when a particular set of incentives unintentionally provides motivation for people to do things that are not optimal for them or others.
A requirement for market forces to be effective in producing appropriate behaviour is that the market actually punish bad behaviour and reward good behaviour. The following is an example of this not occurring. If customers do not know about an earthquake code or don’t understand the benefits to the customer or community of following it, then there will be no market preference for designers and builders to follow it. An even worse outcome occurs if there is a cost advantage by not following the code. The result is that companies do not follow the code. And if a company does, then the market will penalise it for doing so.
A critical element for the success of any approach is that practitioners must actively participate in it. If engineers believe that the system is not working, they are the ones with the greatest chance of changing it.
Relying on government to see an impending disaster is to wait for Godot.
Don\'t believe the clap-trap about regulation stifling business. Just like financial regulation and fair trading rules, sound building codes create prosperity, not endanger it. They can turn a disaster into a minor disruption.