Hey everyone!
Thanks for being a part of our online community.
This week we’d like to share a video snippet with you titled The 9 constructs.
These constructs were created by our founder Dr. Martin Smith and are what we reference/implement to yield the results we do for our clients.
Please click here to watch it.
For more info, please email info@presagegroup.com
We’re back with another episode of The Presage Effect Podcast Ep.005.
The episode features our very own Subject Matter Expert, Michelle Morrissey.
This is a great overview on how The Presage Group engages with our clients. Additionally, it shines light on the importance of creating great company culture. We have to consistently engage the people in our organizations so we continue to understand how they think and feel while they’re ‘in the field’.
Please click here to watch and listen on youtube. You can also enjoy it on your favourite podcast streaming formula.
Lots of new and exciting content on the way. Thanks for your support.
The funds that your organization invests in a Presage solution shall be returned to you via improvements in efficiency and compliance with organizational policies and procedures. This will result in greater consistency and predictability of operational costs. Presage will make conservative assumptions based on our knowledge of your specific industry, define metrics for improved efficiencies, and with your basic inputs, we will be able to provide your organization with a rough order of magnitude improvement in those financial metrics. With that, we will demonstrate how rapidly the invested funds will be returned to your organization and then we will measure the same metrics post-implementation to determine exactly what the financial benefit of the Presage solution is to your organization.
Less empirical but certainly no less important, the Presage solutions have been proven to drive organizational cultural changes. Instead of measuring these metrics in terms of financial value, these improvements are measured in terms of enhanced workplace professionalism, improved employee morale, a heightened sense of ownership over operational procedures, and quite importantly, a feeling of “care-ismTM” from the Company to its employees.
When we determine why employees in your organization do what they do in the moment and then help them improve their situational awareness through the implementation of a wide range of mitigation strategies. A return on your investment will be achieved through enhanced safety. Although this ROI is often difficult to predict financially, safety metrics such as reduced downtime, employee and customer workplace injuries, and reputational impact will be measured and compared both pre and post implementation.
Dr. Martin Smith is the CEO and Co-founder of Presage Group Inc. After leaving his first career in the airlines (ramp rat, flight dispatcher, pilot), he eventually obtained his Ph.D. in Psychology from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Dr. Smith is an expert in Human Factors research and applied solutions within the Enterprise Risk Management paradigm. Over the last 20 years Dr. Smith has developed several software solutions designed specifically to target the psychology of non-compliance or human error within an employee workforce. Dr. Smith has been a noted conference speaker and consultant, IATA ICAO, TSB, NTSB, Eurocontrol, Flight Safety Foundation (FSF), Regional Airline Association (RAA), A4A, and the International Conference on Offshore Wind Energy (UK), to name a few. Moreover, as a subject matter expert in the psychology of human error Dr. Smith acted as the Senior Scientific Advisor for IATA’s IGOM/AHM projects, as well as more recently, FSF’s global initiative on improving Go-around compliance. Dr. Smith has published numerous scientific articles and White Papers on the subject of non-compliance in highly regulated and complex organizational systems.
With over 36 years of experience in one of the largest utilities in North America, Len is a shining example of hard work and perseverance, successfully navigating the corporate hierarchy from bottom to top. In senior and executive positions, Len provided inspirational leadership, demonstrating brilliance in challenging seemingly no-win situations and developing individuals within the organization to constantly improve and move forward professionally and personally.
Equally comfortable in the boardroom, in the field, or in front of large audiences, with administrative staff, and trades or technical staff, Len challenges the status quo and demonstrates the value of creating and encouraging diversified and inclusive teams.
Len, as Vice President of Field Operations, oversaw 3,500 staff and a $1.2 billion dollar work program. His strengths in finding efficiencies, improving safety and operational performances, cultivating strong union/management relationships, enhancing management strategies, and optimizing processes consistently demonstrated proven return on investment for individuals, teams and corporations. Len served on the Board of Directors of Ontario One Call and was Chair for two terms
Michelle is a seasoned executive and transformational leader who has held several senior roles, including Vice President Construction and Vice President Health Safety Environment (HSE) at one of the largest North American Utilities.
In the construction role, Michelle provided active and dynamic leadership and strategic direction to a large and progressive construction organization, which focused on the safe and efficient delivery and completion of large and complex multi million-dollar work programs. These included capital projects and programs to build and maintain critical infrastructure across the province utilizing a unionized “casual” workforce.
As VP HSE she provided strategic support to the Leadership Team, Board of Directors and Lines of Businesses, as well as oversaw the management and delivery of the technical and trades training program, including apprenticeship programs for multiple trades. She ensured the management and maintenance of the work methods and document information systems. Developed and maintained effective health, safety, rehabilitation and environmental management systems and oversaw various field support services.
Michelle continues to embrace executive leadership roles with Presage, while providing lead support for customer engagement, as well as, performing data analysis, development of mitigation strategies and new product offerings, preparation of training, support and reference materials.
Having graduated with a Masters Degree in Kinesiology (Biomechanics & Work Physiology) Michelle remains an active member of the University of Waterloo Applied Health Sciences Dean’s Advisory Council. Michelle is the President and Co-founder of The G.O. Group, a management consulting firm.
Piyush is an experienced executive in the field of aviation. Most recently, he spent 2½ years
with Sunwing Airlines in the role of Vice President Flight Operations. Along with safety,
operational, regulatory, and fiduciary responsibility of more than 30,000 flights per year, he
maintained his pilot proficiency flying on the line as a B737 Captain as often as possible.
Previously, he was the Vice President Flight Operations at Porter Airlines where he was a
founding team member from its inception in early 2006. He contributed to helping build Porter
from its humble 4 aircraft operation to more than 65,000 flights per year carrying more than 3-
million passengers. Prior to that, Piyush spent 10-years with Bombardier Aerospace as their
Chief Pilot & Customer Liaison Pilot. In addition to his OEM test pilot duties, Piyush spent much
of his Bombardier tenure overseas training pilots, delivering new aircraft, conducting sales &
marketing tours, and providing operational support to various airlines globally.
Since 2018, Piyush has been on the Board of Directors for The Redwood – a not-for-profit
shelter for women and their children fleeing domestic abuse. More recently, Piyush was elected
to the Board of Directors for the Northern Lights Aero Foundation which promotes and
celebrates women in the field of aviation and aerospace in Canada. Piyush founded and chaired
the Y.A.Y! (You Are You!) diversity and inclusion committee at Sunwing and he also co-
founded/chaired the successful Women Soar at Porter program. Piyush has also been on the
Advisory Boards for Colleges, and Universities, most notably, the Seneca College Aviation PAC
(Program Advisory Committee).
Piyush is a graduate of the Seneca Aviation Program (Class ’93) and he completed a Master’s of
Business Administration (MBA) graduate degree at the Rotman School of Business (University of
Toronto) in 2014.
Randy is a former Epidemiologist with experience in measurement, predictive modelling, and automation across diverse subject areas.
Randy has published several scientific papers and has served as a consultant data scientist for projects including prediction from administrative healthcare data, processing physical activity data from wearables, behavioural prediction, and military deployment models for the Canadian Armed Forces.
He completed his Masters degree in 2015 and is currently a PhD candidate at Queen’s University, with his PhD expected to be completed in 2023. Randy joined Presage in 2021 as the Director of Analytics.
Dr. Brooke Linden (MA, PhD) is a Public Health Scientist and Epidemiologist specializing in stress and mental health outcomes. As Director of Research at Presage, Brooke oversees project planning and methodological decision-making, as well as collaborating with the Analytics branch on both quantitative and qualitative analyses. In addition to her role with Presage, Brooke is a Research Scientist with the Health Services and Policy Research Institute at Queen's University, as well as an Adjunct Assistant Professor across several Departments.
Umair holds a PhD in Civil Engineering, specializing in transportation engineering, with a focus on developing driver behaviour models for traffic simulation. During his graduate studies, Umair published several scientific papers and served as a research scientist and developer for projects with the Ministry of Transportation Ontario. He also served as an instructor of Data Analytics at St. Clair College in Windsor, Ontario. In 2023, Umair transitioned into the role of Junior Data Scientist at the Presage Group.
A former Director of Flight Safety for a global airline Captain Curtis has been an authoritative voice of Stable Approach, Stable Landing, and Go-around (SALGA) decision-making globally for over 10 years. Since stating; “ …there is no other single decision that can have as much impact on aviation safety today as the decision to go-around…” he has been an outspoken champion and advocate to re-think the way the aviation industry promotes the decision to go-around, and create better and more usable Stable Landing policies, procedures, and go-around trigger guidance. Bill has chaired industry premier flight safety committees such as the Flight Safety Foundation’s International Advisory Committee (IAC), twice chaired IATA’s Safety Advisory Committee and Safety Group, co-chaired the A4A’s (ATA) Flight Safety Committee, co-chaired the FSF’s Go-Around Decision-Making and Execution (GADM&E) Project, and sits on the CAST ALG JSAIT working group. He has facilitated dozens of SALGA seminars and working groups to multiple global airlines and presented GADM&E at international safety conferences for many years. An architect of the Dynamic Situational Awareness Model (DSAM) and intuitive Risk Assessment Model (IRAM), Bill’s philosophy is “...if our work doesn’t result in a useable policy or procedure that reaches the flight deck or shop floor, we have done little to improve safety…”. He promotes in-the-moment decision-making by employees should be simple when designed and managed well. A mechanical engineer, Bill has held numerous flight operations management positions, currently flies the Boeing 787 as a check airman with over 15,000 commercial hours, is a member of the Flight Safety Foundation’s IAC, a member of the CAST ALG JSAIT, and has been part of the Presage Group’s scientific team for over ten years.
Craig is the former Senior Vice President of Air Operations at Southwest Airlines, overseeing Flight Operations, Inflight, Network Operations Center and Regulatory Compliance. During his SVP tenure he also served on the FAA’s NextGen Advisory Committee and as the Subcommittee Chair for two years. Previously he was the Vice President of Flight Operations and a former domicile Chief Pilot.
Prior to Southwest Airlines he was the Director of Flight Standards at Skywest Airlines and a Designated Flight Examiner. He currently teaches part-time as an adjunct instructor at Arizona State University in the aviation program.
Craig and his wife live comfortably in Utah. He joined Presage in early 2021 as an Aviation Consultant & SME.
Dick Karl has had two long time love affairs with two distinct professions: aviation and surgery. In both these complex, high stakes worlds, Dr. Karl has been specifically interested in safety.
While in medical school at Cornell University, Dick got his private pilot’s license. Two years after graduating, he bought his first airplane while serving as a general medical officer in the US Army.
After finishing surgical training at Washington University in St. Louis, Dick joined the surgical faculty at the University of Chicago, where his interest in oncology developed.
Just five years out of training, Dr. Karl was appointed as a full professor of surgery at the University of South Florida in Tampa. There he was appointed the founding medical director of the Moffitt Cancer Center and then chairman of the university’s surgery department.
Simultaneously, Dick’s interest in aviation led to the operation of increasingly complex aircraft. An avid writer, he was selected to write a column in FLYING magazine, where he has continued to contribute monthly since 2001.
In 2005 Dr. Karl founded the Surgical Safety Institute that sought to help hospitals reduce error by using proven aviation techniques such as checklists, briefings, team training , call outs and read backs.
After earning an ATP and a type rating in Lear Jets, Dick began flying commercially in a Lear 31 in 2010. In 2013, he quit the practice of surgery and was hired full time as a part 135 Cessna Citation 3 pilot.
Dick is type rated in CE-500, CE525 (S), RB-390(s) BE-737 and LRJ. He and his wife, Cathy, own and operate a Citation CJ1.
Jacques Mignault, a flight safety specialist and retired airline captain, joined the Presage team in 2019 upon retirement from active commercial flying. His professional career encompassed some 23 years in the airline industry and 24 years in the Canadian Air Force as a military officer and pilot. While in the military, he served on several prominent staff assignments, such as Assistant to the Chief of the Defence Staff and to the Minister of National Defence, in addition to accumulating flying experience as a flight training instructor and pilot-in-command of large category aircraft including the CC-130 Hercules and the NATO E-3A Airborne Early Warning & Control System (AWACS). He is a graduate of the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College, and he held a command post as Commanding Officer of 436 Tactical Transport Squadron (1993-95) at the time Canada took part in United Nations operations in Bosnia and in Rwanda. Captain Mignault’s airline career was primarily spent at Air Transat (21 years) where he acted as pilot-in-command on three wide-body type aircraft (L-1011 TriStar, A310 and A330), held instructor and check pilot positions, as well as assumed various managerial responsibilities in Flight Operations and in the corporate structure. He was a member of the airline’s executive team for 8 years as the Senior Director Safety, Quality and Security overseeing the development and management of the Safety Management System.
Mark joined Presage in 2021 after a 21 year career as a pilot with Air Canada. He served in a variety of management positions during his airline career, including Chief Pilot on the Boeing 787 and Director of Flight Operations at Air Canada Rouge. During this time he chaired a committee which introduced a new Stable Approach, Landing and Go-Around policy (SALGA), a process facilitated by Presage Group.
Prior to his airline career Mark spent 10 years in the RCAF as a fighter pilot and also spent several years in corporate aviation. When he transitioned to the airline world he returned to the RCAF as a reserve officer and spent 11 years as a tactical helicopter pilot.
Mark has a Bachelor of Science in Professional Aeronautics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He and his wife live in Kingston Ontario and have three sons.
David Barnes is an accomplished aviation professional with over 23 years' experience and extensive working knowledge of flight operations, safety management systems, audit and investigation in both domestic and international markets. The current Regional Manager / Risk and Compliance Specialist for Presage, he has an excellent understanding of regulations, policy development, international legislation and their application in cross-functional environments. Adaptable and flexible with experience in diverse team management and multi-discipline organisations. David holds an ICAO Air Transport Pilot Licence and command endorsements for Boeing 737-300 through to 900 series aircraft, Embraer 190/170 regional jets, Fokker 70/100 and Dash-8 Turbo-props. His flight operations background includes senior base appointments with oversight of the Australian Customs Border Patrol unit providing surveillance of the North Australian Border and Torres Straights Islands. He further trained, assessed and appointed senior officials and management on Human Factors, Crew Resource Management and Fatigue Management Systems. A Captain with Virgin Australia, David regularly operated into all major capital cities in Australia and Internationally throughout New Zealand, Fiji and the Pacific Islands, South East Asia and remote destinations including East Timor, Cocos and Christmas Island. Working for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority as a Flying Operations Inspector and Certificate Team Manager, his portfolio included over 75 certificates comprising large jet aircraft operators, private jet multinationals, aeromedical services, global flight schools and maintenance organisations. His responsibilities extended from surveillance and enforcement to regulatory appointments and assessments of senior personnel, check and training duties of executive airline staff, development and implementation of regulatory frameworks and IT User Interface Testing. As a senior safety executive, David implemented multiple risk, compliance and containment systems that improved airline safety profiles. He was appointed a position on the International Advisory Committee for the Flight Safety Foundation in 2018 as a representative for the Australasian and South-East Asian region. For many years David has also volunteered his time serving as an operational Firefighter for the Country Fire Authority in Australia to help protect local and regional communities.
Brian’s life, work and educational background are quite diverse. Born in England raised in New York city and has resided in what he describes as the greatest country in the world, Canada, for the last 40+years. He has 25 plus years of experience in the behavioural sciences field in frontline and senior managements positions, specializing in group dynamics, mediation and labour relations and therapeutic vs. punishment interventions with hard to serve offenders. He was part of a team that pioneered the first maximum secure treatment program in Canada for violent and dangerous young offenders. Brian has developed Cognitive Behavioural Stress Management and Self Analysis self-help tools. He has a love for aviation is a former corporate pilot he holds a commercial pilots license, multi-IFR rating, 737NG endorsement and is a 737NG FBT instructor. He holds an honors B.P.A. in Public Administration with a minor in psychology and race relations from Ryerson University, is a Masters in Counselling Psychology Candidate, has Study Alternative Dispute Resolution at Windsor Law School and the Ontario Institute for Arbitration and Mediation. Brian is a former Cable News Broadcast and interview talk show host. He is also a successful entrepreneur who owns and operates one of the largest private social service agencies in Canada. Most recently Brian has entered into the Pod Casting world. Brian feels extremely humbled and lucky to be part of the Presage team that is comprised of unbelievable subject matter experts who do work that no other company on the planet can do.
Amy is a recent BHSc (Honours) graduate from Queen’s University, with a specialization in Applied Research Methods in Health Sciences and Pharmacology, completing an honours thesis in the field of mental health and well-being. She is a current MSc student at the University of Waterloo in the field of Public Health Sciences, specifically epidemiology and biostatistics, to be completed in 2025. She has worked as a research assistant at Queen’s University at the Health Services and Policy Research Institute, working on projects pertaining to post-secondary student mental health, resilience, and stress. She joined Presage in early 2023 as a Junior Data Analyst.
Kary graduated from the Executive Office Administration program as a "Sheridan Scholar", from Sheridan College. During her college years, she was an amateur boxer, worked as a bartender and managed the books for a hair salon, as well as volunteered as a tutor at Sheridan College.
Kary has 15+ years of experience in the office executive assistant and office management role, in the software industry. She is intrigued in how the human brain works which is what led her to Presage Group Inc., where she has been skillfully managing administrative duties for her colleagues since 2014. This role has made her grow not only professionally but on a personal level as well.
From being on the PTA to coaching soccer teams, Kary is a mom of 2 boys, an active volunteer in her community and hopes to become a foster parent in the future.
The Presage software solution looks at people – the core of enterprise behavioural risk management. We find: who is at risk, why they are at risk, and what you need to do to keep them safe and compliant. Our custom surveys collect data on the psychosocial factors driving non-compliance; our Insights Portal translates that data into clear-as-day representations of the current state and culture of safety; and, our diverse team of professionals collaborates with yours to offer mitigation strategies that build a culture of safety over time. You will see what you have never seen before.
By analyzing the psychosocial behaviours driving non-compliance, we elevate safety awareness and proactively mitigate risk to your people, your business, and your brand. The Presage approach fortifies and amplifies traditional approaches to Enterprise Risk Management by focusing on answering one simple, fundamental question: Why do people do what they do in the moment?
The Presage approach expands on your capacity to build a culture of safety by being proactive and focusing on understanding what drives people’s behaviours and actions, what determines their decision making, and how that impacts your organizational culture. This understanding empowers you to have courageous conversations around safety and to nurture a culture of safety—one in which everyone looks out for everyone; everyone has a voice; and everyone contributes to a community of learning. In fact, we don’t just help you build a culture of safety, we elevate you to an organizational culture of trust and integrity—a culture that your employees will assume with pride.
What we know may seem obvious, but the not-so-obvious part is how do you know if your employees listen to their gut? How do you know if your employees are keeping each other safe? How do you know if your employees feel your company supports them? Our surveys and analytics extract these situational, cognitive, and social factors and, using customizable dashboards and drill-down reporting, provide new insights on your organizational culture. You will see things you have never seen before.
Employees respond to a non-disruptive survey at least 2 times a year. This data is processed by the Presage analytic engine and transformed into clean, highly visual reports with targeted empirical assessments. These tools empower you to develop data-driven mitigation and intervention strategies with confidence. The Presage approach is just that simple and it just works.
First we take your pulse. We survey and gather data directly from your workforce using custom surveys. The surveys are designed to be:
Thorough — Vital to our analytics is collecting statistically significant data on all nine Presage core constructs;
Relatable — We take the time to get to know your industry, risks, and safety processes so our surveys communicate in familiar terms; and,
Accessible — Our surveys are accessible across all devices including smart phones and tablets and are available in multiple languages.
All of this over industry standard transport layer security (HTTPS) with surveys protected by passcode/secret key to ensure security and anonymity of every user in the system. Your safety data is safe with us.
To further augment data from surveys we also factor in historical accident/incident data, cost data, and claims data. The survey data is then analyzed to create our three safety awareness indices — Situation Awareness (Situational Factors), Personal Safety Knowledge (Cognitive Factors), Safety Consciousness (Social Factors) — and compared against our Behavioural Risk Profile Database to provide you with actionable insights and targeted mitigation presented through dashboards and drill-down reporting.
Presage offers a measure of safety awareness based on nine areas of risk known as our core constructs. We group these constructs together to provide you with three safety awareness indices:
These feed into a single overall measure of safety awareness called the Presage Index. This allows the conversation about safety to be as broad or specific as you want.
Your Insights Portal displays survey responses in real time and updates the Safety Awareness Indices as statistically significant amounts of data are received. With clear data visualizations, at a glance you are able to identify what percentage of your workforce is considered a high-risk group and the areas in which they are most at risk. You can get a bird’s eye view of safety in your company or bring it right down to ground level, looking at specific divisions and teams based on your defined hierarchy. This level of clarity equips you to have targeted conversations about what is being done differently in high-risk groups, how these groups can be supported, and how we can raise the level of safety awareness at every level of the organization.
Move away from the one-size-fits-all approach to risk mitigation because when it comes down to it, it’s personal. And the Presage approach? It’s powerful. We top up the online reports with our own insights and analyses generated by our in-house data analysts, behavioural scientists, and industry experts. We work with you to devise specific, unobtrusive mitigation strategies leveraging what already works in your current processes and learning systems. The goal is to cultivate an organization that embodies care-ism with our game changing low-touch, high-impact approach to enterprise behavioural risk management.
Founded in 2000, Presage Group, Inc., is a privately-held company whose technology reaches into the workplace to predict human behaviour with a diagnostic tool that targets the invisible threat of behavioural risk.
It was through his earliest career choice that Presage founder, Dr. Martin Smith, first came into to contact with the kind of issues – essentially, those of being ‘only human’ – that he would later be so dedicated to resolving. Aviation was his passion, and as a teenager he worked in ground handling, then flight dispatch, and finally flight operations.
Although he loved flying, he was left frustrated and concerned by the frequency of errors and the number of near misses that would have to be averted. Dr. Smith’s frustration turned into curiosity when he studied situational awareness in commercial pilots for his doctoral thesis, whose research went on to help form what is now the backbone of Presage.
Human error affects just about every single industry and sector, every department, and every function of every company. We are all aware of costly incidents that just didn’t have to be, from the slight to the significant – a mishap on the shop floor, a medical misadventure, or some other miscalculation with far-reaching consequences.
Yet human error is so prevalent throughout every aspect of our culture and experience that we rarely – if ever – consider the possibility of actually being able to eliminate it. But this is exactly why Presage is different. At the heart of all our groundbreaking technology and software is this very earnest desire to understand, improve, and fix. So it’s not the bits and bytes that define us, but rather our focus on people, and the organizations within which they interact and grow.
So much so, that Presage today plays an active part in the character, practices, and day-to-day decision-making of its thousands of users, taking into consideration their various industries, sectors, circumstances and aspirations. So while a commitment to curing organizations of all avoidable accidents may in the end prove an impossible task, with such a lofty ambition as our driving force, as well as the confidence that our users continue to show in us everyday, we don’t doubt the role we shall play in their future.
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