FINANCIAL considerations must not distract anyone from setting, maintaining or applying acceptable safety standards, according to Lloyd's Register's annual report.
It was often suggested that responsibility for safety could only be exercised in an environment from which all commercial considerations were excluded, said Sir Roderick MacLeod in the company's 1992 document.
''On the contrary, I believe that the safety business is a real business and that even those with the most direct responsibilities for safety must be aware of commercial consideration and respond to them,'' said the shipping industry leader who died recently.
Sir Roderick's comments form a distillation of the philosophy that guided him, and Lloyd's Register (LR), during the past 10 years.
And in focusing on The Business of Safety as the theme of the report, Sir Roderick unequivocally restated the case for classification societies and refuted criticism of the classification system.
Emphasising that cost effectiveness played a key part in industrial design, for ships as much as for motor cars, Sir Roderick said a safety organisation needed an impetus to make sure it was fully efficient.
He also pointed out that it needed a proper financial contribution for services to be maintained and developed, and research undertaken.