ABOUT ORM SAFETY
An independent consultancy, principal-led and specialist-backed.
ORM Safety has been an independent consultancy since 2015. We work with organisations that carry serious operational risk and need to know, not assume, that the controls on it work.
Since 2015
Independent consultancy
25+ years
WHS and operational risk
Melbourne
Based in Camberwell
Vic and model WHS
Both regimes, kept separate
HOW WE THINK ABOUT THIS
Safety performance is an output of how an organisation actually operates.
How decisions get made under pressure, what leaders reward and tolerate, and whether the controls that matter are present at the point of work. The useful question is rarely whether the documentation is compliant. It is whether the work as done matches the work as imagined, and what happens in the gap.
We start at the workface and finish in the boardroom. We are not a certification body, we don't resell software, and we don't sell training hours. That independence is the product.
OUR MISSION
Evidence, not assurance, that the controls protecting your people actually work.
Three commitments shape every engagement, whatever its size.
01
Evidence, not assurance
A rating without an evidence trail is an opinion with a number attached. We test what happens at the workface, not what the documents intend.
02
Principal-led engagements
The principal leads every engagement and does the senior work himself. The person who scopes the work is the person on your site.
03
Built for the work, not the file
Systems your people can use on the job, written for your operation rather than lifted from a template pack.
David Hopkins
FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT
David founded ORM Safety in 2015. He has more than 25 years in work health and safety and operational risk across manufacturing, construction, energy and utilities, retail, supply chain, agribusiness, healthcare and government.
A board report saying the controls are in place isn't proof. My job is to go and find out.
Lead Investigator
Lead Auditor
HOW ENGAGEMENTS ARE STAFFED
We scale outward, and the principal stays on the job.
When a national firm scales an engagement, it scales downward: more junior consultants on the ground, the senior name on the cover. Where scope, geography or discipline requires it, we engage associates and specialists. They work to ORM Safety's scope, method and quality control, and the principal signs the work.
WHAT WE DELIBERATELY REFER OUT
We would rather introduce you to someone who does it properly than do it occasionally ourselves.
Occupational hygiene and laboratory testing
Asbestos and hazardous materials
Health monitoring
Clinical and counselling support
Legal advice