RAMA has provided Expert Witness services in over 200 cases, including industry, historic sites, supermarkets, leisure facilities, parks, fairgrounds, and water slides.
Projects have been carried out for regulators including the Health and Safety Executive, numerous government departments, the public and private sectors, universities, and international agencies (WHO, IAEA, ECOSA, FIPRA).
Our contact and involvement with the academic research community means that we constantly update our teaching in line with current thinking and developments.
In the field of risk management and safety, RAMA, since its formation in 1995, has sought to bridge this divide by acting as a conduit. This entails maintaining close links with academia while providing services to end users in the public, private and voluntary sectors. Wherever possible, we try to maximise the use of evidence for the public benefit.
We combine decades of experience in risk management with cutting edge academic research.
Over 30 years' experience of legal cases across a variety of sectors.
We have over 30 years’ experience using scientific methodology for the analysis of risks.
Our Expert Witness service has some of the highest success rates in the industry.
“The separation between academic knowledge and the public interest creates a land of lost opportunities."
- Rick Kelly (decd), former Scientific Adviser to the GLC
In the field of risk management and safety, RAMA, since its formation in 1995, has sought to bridge this divide by acting as a conduit. This entails maintaining close links with academia while providing services to end users in the public, private and voluntary sectors. Wherever possible, we try to maximise the use of evidence for the public benefit.
Everyone seeks to minimise risk and ensure safety but, on reflection, not at any price. This gives rise to the fundamental question of ‘How safe is safe enough?’
RAMA’s approach is to follow the UK’s philosophy of risk management which requires risks to be assessed and reduced So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable (SFAIRP) or until As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP).
Essentially, there is not a requirement to eliminate or minimise risk, but to do everything that is reasonable to control a hazard.
Reasonableness requires a balancing judgment to be made between the benefits of a control measure, i.e., by how much it will reduce a target risk, and the cost and difficulty of applying the measure.
This is our philosophy.
Access to research assists the determination of what is reasonable and the identification of subsequent risk management activities.
Especially within the public and voluntary sectors we further believe that the ‘cost’ of a control measure should factor in any concomitant loss of social utility.
For example, closing children’s playgrounds during COVID, while to some extent reducing risk of transmission, deprived children of the health, psychological and developmental benefits which play provides (see 'Research and Publications' for more details).
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