IPB Insurance hosted a recent conference entitled ‘Better Outcomes – Insurance and Risk Remediation’ in Athlone on Friday 9^th November. The aim of the conference was to update Members on the impressive work being carried out by local authorities around the country to manage and reduce claims made as a result of slips and trips on pedestrian surfaces and to share learnings on managing risk in public space. The conference was attended by senior local authority managers, insurance officers, road and infrastructure engineers and technicians with the responsibility for designing and maintaining public spaces.

The conference was an all-day event comprising two sessions. The morning session consisted of short informative presentations from seven experts. David Malone, Client Relationship Manager, IPB Insurance, spoke about insurance and provided attendees with an overview of public liability claims. Robert Moore, Risk Advisor, IPB Insurance, presented on governance, risk and compliance and highlighted the importance of having an internal control framework to manage all types of risk.

IPB’s fraud team discussed real life insurance fraud case studies and outlined their rigorous approach to combating fraudulent claims. After a short coffee break the attendees listened to three speakers each of whom spoke on a different aspect of risk remediation;

• Padraig Kelly, an Executive Architect with Mayo County Council spoke about designing public-realm spaces and his experiences of this in Castlebar, Co Mayo.

• Chartered Engineer and expert witness, Tom Rowan, CEO, Rowan Engineering Consultants, gave an informative talk on the materials used in public spaces and the importance of slip resistance and hardness testing when selecting these materials.

• Colm Morrissey, an Executive Engineer with Limerick City and County Council, talked about his experience of combating public liability claims in Limerick and the challenges he faced. The speakers and Ivor Heavey then answered any questions the audience had in a panel style Q&A session.

The risk remediation workshop which was held in the afternoon, was specifically designed for engineers and technicians and worked as an open forum for the engineers to discuss real life case studies. They were able to impart ways in which they felt risk elements could be eliminated from certain situations as well as hearing from the engineers who had dealt with each of the situations.

The conference proved to be a great success with over 100 delegates attending. The feedback from attendees was very positive and Members will continue to keep each other informed on developments and new initiatives in this area.