IIRSM Partner Case Study: DFDS

IIRSM Risk Excellence Award-winner DFDS is the busiest shipping company of its kind in Northern Europe and one of the busiest in the continent. Headquartered in Copenhagen, it has 10,000 employees in 21 countries. Its port at Immingham and Grimsby is the UK’s largest by tonnage and is the fourth busiest port in Europe.  

Richard Lait, Head of Safety, Security and Environment at DFDS Seaways, says: “We want to broadcast what we are doing and share learning within the wider industry. There is a bit of work to be done in terms of more collaboration across wider industry needed but we are hoping we can build on our partnership with IIRSM along with the port industry to do that.  

“Internally, we have been working on developing our organisational culture and initiating new initiatives to do that. This work is well under way, and we want to focus on developing best practice on a larger scale.” 

Richard has been prominent in leading the company on its journey towards a better organisational culture for managing risk by building trust and relationships developing training, education and improved communications.  

A Fellow of IIRSM, Richard worked within the rail industry for 22 years, representing the rail industry on a number of working groups, including the leadership group that and developed the 2019 Risk Management Maturity Model for the industry. “My approach here at DFDS has been borne out of experiences gained from working in a highly regulated and safety critical industry. The sharing of information and best practice techniques are second nature and help develop continuous improvement as a result of collaboration and cooperation.” 

Key for Richard is ensuring a structured approach to the delivery of employee engagement and giving staff a sense of pride and belonging to within the business. As a result, some DFDS staff are IIRSM members, others are Associate members and all are encouraged to take part in IIRSM training courses and development programmes. “We are exploring options to standardise our approach, with a greater focus on ‘standardisation’ across the wider DFDS organisation in our maturity development.  

“We want to use our partnership with IIRSM to continue exploring improvements and developments in our maturity to also influence the wider industry from a risk perspective. I tell the team to keep looking and get involved in as much as possible so that our partnership with IIRSM continues to deliver value for both DFDS and IIRSM.”