Vale Alan D. Quilley

I received an email today from John Wettstein (http://safetystrategies.ca/) with the sad news of the passing of Alan D. Quilley. The following is simply my reflection on engagement with Alan and not intended to be a eulogy.

I never met Alan except online where he was articulate, rational and enthusiastic in debate. Alan was not in the debate for agreement and was always happy to agree to disagree. His purpose was in the exchange, the learning and sharing viewpoints.

Alan was a keen writer and has written extensively for the blog site, I think his best ever was this one: https://safetyrisk.net/the-problem-with-zero-goals-and-results/ but you can read many other of Alan’s blogs here: https://safetyrisk.net/author/alanq/

I first came across Alan on Linkedin safety groups but this excursion into nowhere land didn’t last long and since abandoning the pooling of ignorance kept in touch with Alan through the email. Alan prided himself on his quest to be rational and logical and this was always his approach to the various ideas that get thrown about safety. I read his books and found them interesting and again, the purpose was to develop learning not agreement, he didn’t expect it.

Alan had his own blog https://safetyresults.wordpress.com/ and was prolific in writing, he was amongst other things a pretty talented guitarist too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJfQzV6QOO0 ).

There wasn’t much Alan and I agreed on when we debated except the stupidity of the zero cult, the problems of perfectionism (https://safetyrisk.net/avoid-seeking-the-impossible/) and the importance of debate in the safety space. However, like his ‘safety logically’ list (https://www.ohscanada.com/opinions/safety-logically-hard-work-worth/) I would probably add another 10, but happy to leave it at 10.

One of Alan’s strengths was persistence in debate but I was never able to convince him too far down the track of engaging in the Social Psychology of Risk (SPoR) but we always kept the conversation channels open. Alan was a champion for certification and we disagreed on that too but again, he was always happy to keep the channels open for conversation.

I had no idea that Alan was battling cancer and think the last debate we had was on the nature of freedom, again in disagreement but keeping the channels open for conversation.

The purpose of this tribute to Alan is simply to say, ‘thanks for keeping the channels open, for your conversation, challenges, questions, debate and contributions to an industry that desperately needed your voice’. RIP

Read some of Alan’s articles HERE

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Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

Embodied Risk - May 31, 2023
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History and Hindsight in Safety - May 26, 2023
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PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.