The One Percent Safer Team
Andrew Sharman
Director and Trustee
People are losing their lives today because of the work they do: nearly 2.8 million lives lost a year, that’s one every ten seconds. Through these tragic accidents real people turn into statistics, in the words of UB40, they become the “one in ten, a number on a list, even though I don’t exist… nobody knows me, even though I’m always there, a statistical reminder of a world that doesn’t care.”
I created One Percent Safer because I can’t accept these statistics – and I know we all have it in us to effect change and create a safer world. I hatched the idea of somehow harnessing wisdom into some sort of compendium that any leader, anywhere, could access and put into practice in order to build some incremental progress towards a safer, healthier world of work. Opening my ‘little black book’ and firing off a few emails with a rough concept of the book felt exciting at first – and then daunting to find, the next morning, no replies.
I waited. A reply arrived, and then another, and another. The contributions kept coming, from my ‘professional heroes’, eminent academics, top-notch scientists, business leaders, those with a story to share. Their stories, all 142 of them, are this book. Together, cumulatively, with thousands of small steps, we will save lives, today, tomorrow, every day.
Tim Eldridge
Director and Trustee
Having had a long career in health and safety, I am deeply aware of the need to support those who want to protect people at work from harm, but don’t have all the resources and skills to do this. One Percent Safer is both the mantra and methodology to help achieve this and I am proud to be able to support people across the world deliver on our vision.
Melissa Mark
Director and Trustee
I immediately joined when the opportunity came to me as I am totally passionate about making a difference to safety and health in the workplace and I am supportive of any program or mission that seeks to stem the negative impacts to families, communities and the workplace. I believe in collaboration and learning from each other and this is the underpinning philosophy of the One Percent Safer movement so I am proud to be one of the One Percent Safer game changers!
Emma Evans
Director and Trustee
I joined the ranks at the One Percent Safer Foundation actually because its core aims, values and beliefs align with my own. I whole-heartedly believe in ‘giving back’ to society and with One Percent Safer that means helping to raise more awareness about health and safety and the benefits from marginal gains and continuous improvement.
Norman Richie
Director and Trustee
Norman Ritchie was educated as a Mechanical Engineer at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He has 38 years of experience of project and risk management, largely in the oil and gas industry. As a Director of vPSI group, LLC, which he co-founded in 2003, Norman and his colleagues provide consulting and training in project management, performance measurement and improvement, principally in the areas of risk, loss prevention, safety, human performance and organizational learning.
He is an internationally sought-after speaker and acknowledged subject matter expert. A pioneer of web-based safety applications, Norman holds a broad US patent for online job safety analysis systems. Norman was a contributing author to the 2020 “One Percent Safer” book project. A past Chair of the American Society of Safety Professionals’ Houston Energy Corridor section, Norman was honored to be named the 2021 Safety Professional of the Year for Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and the US Gulf Coast.
In his spare time, Norman is President of the board of an animal welfare non-profit, is a Non-Executive Director of the One Percent Safer Foundation, and a GlobalScot Business Ambassador for Scottish Development International. Selected by Society of Petroleum Engineers International (SPE) as 2023-24 Distinguished Lecturer on the topic “New Methods for Learning from Incidents Involving Human & Organizational Performance”.
