Meet the Author with Gill Kernick

Safeopedia Podcasts

We had another great discussion on our Safeopedia Community's Meet the Author, with community member and co-host Gary Wong and author Gill Kernick discussing her book CATASTROPHE and Systemic Change: Learning from the Grenfell Tower Fire and Other Disasters.

In an attempt to understand why, despite enormous efforts, we persistently fail to learn from catastrophic events, this book uses the details of the Grenfell fire as a case study.

• Why do politicians and elected officials concentrate on blame instead of focusing on systemic change?
• How do we “make the water visible” to illuminate the systemic forces at play and grapple with the messiness of complexity?
• What can be done to deal with an organization’s “Black elephant” - not as a piecemeal but a real systemic change?

View book: https://amzn.to/3DxaS18

Podcast: https://shows.acast.com/catastrophe

Article: https://grenfellenquirer.blog/

Our Guest:

Gill Kernick is a consultant in high hazard industries, her work focuses on enabling safety as a driver of broader organisational change and has a focus on the prevention of major accidents. She believes that the voice and tacit knowledge of the front line are a strategic cornerstone.

Gill lived in on the 21st Floor of Grenfell Tower from 2011 to 2014 and on the 14th June 2017, watched it burn. Seven of her former neighbours died. She promising to make their lives count and works to bring some thinking from high hazard industries to ensure we learn.

She frequently publishes papers and recently hosted a multi-disciplinary workshop with Cambridge University’s Bennett Institute. She hosts a blog ‘The Grenfell Enquirer’ to enable and encourage authentic debate and learning, and in 2020 was voted as one of the top 25 most influential people in health and safety in the UK.