Tania Van der Stap is the author of Productive Safety Management 1st edition published internationally in 2003 and 2nd edition in 2025. Tania’s background is diverse across the OSH profession having 25 years’ experience in industries from major gas and mining construction projects to exploration drilling to agribusiness. Pragmatically, she refers to these as “the good, the bad and the simply irresponsible”. Each requires different strategies to deliver improvements in OSH and operational risk management. Key focal areas include the integration of safety, production, and quality through the development of efficient systems concurrently with managerial and leadership capabilities. ‘Production’ by her definition is any organisation’s core business.  

In 2023, the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health – the 50,000 OSH professional membership organisation based in the UK – engaged Tania’s services to write the two textbooks for their Level 6 Diploma in OSH Leadership and Management. This course is the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree. Since then, she’s written several codes of practice and self-assessment tools for WorkSafe Western Australia. 

Importantly, Tania’s delivery model has been adaptive having worked as either a consultant through her business, Align Risk Management, or on staff. She believes it’s valuable to understand the different demands of being the client versus a contractor or sub-contractor. 

Tania’s lasting contribution to the OSH profession includes the Entropy Model of Loss Causation. This explains an integrated, multidisciplinary systems approach to managing risk to pursue safety, production, and quality concurrently.