CEO
Safemap International
Phone +1 604 642 6110
Mobile +1 604 762 6849
Email corrie.pitzer@safemap.com
MEET CORRIE
Corrie Pitzer is a specialist in culture and leadership, focusing on safety…or more specifically on risk. He is a leading consultant in this field globally. He established and approach called ‘risk competency’, that essentially holds that humans are the most capable, most dynamic risk control we have, and as such should be seen as the strongest link in safety, not the weakest. The company that he founded, Safemap International, is today regarded as a leading consultancy in this field, with several international corporations utilizing its expertise.
Qualifications
BA (Industrial Psychology) – 1978
B Honours (Industrial Psychology) – 1984
B Honours (Business Management) Cum Laude – 1986
Masters Business Administration – 1989
Career Experience
Chief Executive Officer
Safemap International Pty Ltd (1991 – to date)
Consulting to the resources industry internationally with emphasis on risk-taking behaviour and Competency Based Safety (CBS).
As Group Risk Management Consultant for Billiton (plc) in South Africa from 1982-1990 he developed a behavioural change process called the Safety Performance Review, which was instrumental in the dramatic improvements in safety performance of this large company during the 1980’s. The successes of this process led to the establishment of Safemap in South Africa and Australia in 1992. Prior to his time with Billiton, he was Regional Human Resources Manager of Implats in South Africa, managing the training and development function of this large mining corporation.
Areas of Special Interest and Research
Safety Culture
He has developed a model and methodology called e-Profile to measure and study safety culture in an organisation. The model had been developed over a period of 20 years in Australia and recently became the benchmark in the Australian resources industry. The Australian Minerals Council selected this technology to be used in a comprehensive survey of the safety culture in the resources industry in 1998. All the major resources organisations participated, including BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Anglocoal, Xstrata, WMC, CSR.
Risk-Taking Behaviour
Over the last seven years he has conducted several privately funded research initiatives, in order to supplement the understanding gained through culture surveys. Risk-taking is an integral part of human behavior, without which we will not be able to explore, innovate or make progress. It has rewards and penalties for the person engaging in it and requires skills and experience to balance those. Several papers have been delivered at international conferences on the subject.
Organisational Error
The very complex issue of “organisational error” has become a very specific area of interest and development work, especially in view of the occurrence of disasters. The conceptual model developed explains the antecedents of mine disasters from a completely different angle than the traditional “lack of attention to safety” or “neglect” model.
This model contends that disasters occur in organisations where basic safety and risk management systems have been driven too far and too complex, resulting in lack of organisational awareness of core risks.