Professor Richard Booth, Director

PhD CEng FIMechE
CFIOSH Chartered Safety and Health Practitioner

Richard was HASTAM’s Chairman from 1998 to 2009 He was from 1972 to 2007 a lecturer in, and from 1978 Head, of the Health and Safety Unit at Aston University.  On his retirement in 2007 he was appointed an Emeritus Professor at Aston.  He originally served an engineering apprenticeship in the motor industry and subsequently carried out research in component and system durability and reliability. 

His principal activities continue to be teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and research on a range of health and safety issues.  He also has a long association with IOSH, being the Founder Chairman of NEBOSH from 1979 to 1985, and IOSH President from 1986 to 1988.  He served from 1979 to 2009, except for three years, as a Member of the IOSH Council.  He is a recipient of RoSPA’s Distinguished Service Award, and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ Viscount Weir Prize for his research on metal fatigue.

He was responsible at Aston for the six-month Post-Graduate Diploma course attended by about 1,500 HSE professional staff.  These courses ran from 1972 to 2000.  HSE staff trained included railway, offshore, nuclear as well as factory inspectors.  Richard’s teaching interests include safety management systems, safety culture, measuring safety performance, incident investigation, integrated management systems, and law & regulatory compliance regimes.  He has delivered a wide range of courses for HASTAM covering all levels from the Board of Directors to operational staff.

He has supervised and carried out research on a wide range of health and safety topics, including the design, development and evaluation of safety management systems, evaluation of regulatory compliance regimes, machinery and construction safety, small firms, occupational road risk, and safety culture in the electricity, nuclear & railway industries.

Richard Booth was a member of the Technical Committee which prepared BS 8800:1996 and 2004 and played a key part in drafting the annexes on Designing an effective H&S Management System, Planning and Implementing, Risk Assessment and Control, and Measuring and Audit.  He was also very fully involved in the preparation of BS OHSAS 18004: 2008 ‘Guide to achieving effective occupational health and safety performance’ (the successor to BS8800) and prepared three annexes.

He spent six years ‘at the sharp end’ as part-time safety adviser for a refractory engineering company working mainly under contract to British Steel carrying out demolition and rebuilding of blast furnaces.  He was Safety Adviser for 10 years for Smith and Nephew (Europe) Ltd. He was one of two independent safety advisors to Transport for London for six years until 2006, and a member of their Safety, Health and Environmental Committee.   He has been retained as a consultant by Unilever.

He has acted as an expert witness both here and in the USA.  He was engaged by HSE in their prosecution of Corus (UK) Ltd in 2006 following a blast furnace explosion, and in the 2007 prosecution of a major oil company and their contractor following a fatality on an offshore gas installation.

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