Dr Christopher Peace

Background

Chris was born and educated in the UK. He graduated from the University of Aston in 1974 and started his working life enforcing health and safety legislation in the UK before emigrating to New Zealand in 1980, moving to work in the insurance industry as a loss control engineer and subsequently as a risk consultant. He is now Lecturer in Occupational Health and Safety at Victoria University.

In 1990 he returned to the UK for five years where he worked for Jardine Lloyd Thompson as a risk management consultant helping major UK employers manage their risks more effectively. During that time he worked with major manufacturing and retail companies and public and private hospitals. His work took him to the USA, the Caribbean, Holland, Spain, Eire and Italy and included acting as an expert witness.

Chris returned to New Zealand in 1995 and set up the Risk Management Unit of Jardine Lloyd Thompson, then a specialist in local body risk and insurance management. There he worked with local authorities, tertiary education bodies and private sector companies on liability risk management, legal compliance and asset management. Projects included auditing risk management and development of risk management frameworks.

In 2000 Chris joined Natural Gas Corporation (NGC) as their Risk Manager, establishing the risk management framework and managing the internal audit and insurance functions of the company. From March 2020 he is carrying out OHS-related research and teaching at Victoria University in Wellington.

Since leaving NGC and setting up RML in 2003, Chris has worked for a wide range of organisations on diverse aspects of risk and the management of risk. He is currently carrying out part-time postgraduate research for a PhD at Victoria University in Wellington into the effectiveness of risk assessments in informing decision makers. In 2023 Chris gained Fellowship of the UK Higher Education Academy (known as Te Arawai Ako at Victoria University of Wellington).

He is now Lecturer in Occupational Health and Safety at Victoria University of Wellington where he teaches and researches health and safety as well as providing some consultancy services. Chris has a firm belief that effective risk management helps drive organisational improvement and is part of all managers’ responsibilities