They grow out of weaknesses in the organisation, built up over years and often with the best of intentions. I call them disaster precursors.
Through APTO, I help executives and their boards identify and address them. I am a consultant and speaker on safety culture and leadership, and I work in English as readily as in French.
As long as nobody recognises them, precursors keep piling up. Then one day the bill arrives, in the form of a fatal accident, an industrial disaster, a conviction or a ruined reputation.
These weaknesses grow out of strategy, practices and management habits. I help leadership teams recognise them.
Your disaster precursors are already there. What do you do?
It's the most popular choice. It holds up until the day someone opens an investigation.
I want to find themEvery assignment starts from the same question. Which decisions in your organisation are paving the way for the next serious accident?
All of them can be delivered in English or French, in France and internationally.
Showing executives that safety is decided first and foremost in their own decisions, and what they can do about it now. In English or French.
En savoir plus about safety leadership keynotesA two-level audit, in the boardroom and on the ground, to find where it hurts and build a roadmap towards resilience.
En savoir plus about the safety culture auditBuilding the programme that takes you to the next level of maturity, with its workstreams and change management.
En savoir plus about the transformation programmeA programme built with you, starting with the executive committee and cascading down the management line.
En savoir plus about the safety leadership programmeThe practices and routines that take your control of critical risks up a level.
En savoir plus about the safety management systemGoing beyond cause tree analysis, back to the organisational decisions that made the event possible.
En savoir plus about serious incident investigationExpertise independent of management to help the board oversee the organisation's critical risks.
En savoir plus about board advisoryScientists, technical experts and trainers brought in as you need them, including for interim management.
My methods apply in any sector that exposes employees, customers or local communities to serious risks.
You cannot decree a change of culture. It is built through action.
I am Mikael Mourey, founder of APTO. I have led health and safety for large international groups and transformed their safety culture from the inside. First at SYSTRA, a leader in transport infrastructure engineering, where I sat on the group management committee. There I rebuilt the strategy after the Eckwersheim disaster, the derailment of a high-speed test train that killed eleven people in 2015. Then at Keolis, the world leader in public transport, where I was a member of the Group Leadership Team.
Alongside these roles, I carried out consulting assignments for major groups in energy, manufacturing, engineering, construction and food, including maturity audits, accident investigations and talks to their leadership teams.
My career began far from executive committees, as a health and safety inspector in local government. As a naval officer with the Marins-Pompiers de Marseille, the French Navy's fire and rescue battalion, I then served as incident commander. On board the Tonnerre, I was head of firefighting and crisis management teaching for French Naval Academy cadets. At CGG, then at SYSTRA and Keolis, I ran safety for operations spread across the world. Between CGG and SYSTRA, I served as an officer in the French armed forces and coordinated joint operations. And I have written two books, one on workplace prevention, the other on how disasters are made.
In 2026, I founded APTO in Provence, in the south of France.
My books lead me to speak in the media, on radio and podcasts, about prevention and how disasters take shape.
Literally “Revolutionising health and safety at work”. A best-seller that spent more than six months at number one in Amazon France's Work category and has since become a reference on the subject.
Order from DiateinoSome companies gamble with other people's lives. This book is the result of an inquiry that took me eight years. In it I analyse in depth the investigations into the major disasters of the last century, from Deepwater Horizon to the Boeing 737 MAX, from Grenfell to PFAS, along with hundreds of scientific studies, which I combine with my own experience in the field. What emerges is the pattern that repeats from one disaster to the next, years before tragedy strikes.
It is an organisational weakness, born of strategy, practices or management habits, that paves the way for a serious accident years before it happens. Taken one by one, precursors go unnoticed. It is the way they stack up that eventually produces the disaster.
Executives, leadership teams and boards of organisations that expose their employees, customers or local residents to serious risks, in energy, industry, transport, construction, engineering, chemicals, food, logistics and many other sectors.
Yes. APTO gives boards of directors and supervisory boards expertise independent of management to oversee the organisation's critical risks: briefing directors, critically reviewing safety indicators, and audits or investigations commissioned by the board or one of its committees.
Yes. Talks and consulting assignments are delivered in English or French, in France and internationally.
With a 30-minute call, with no commitment, to understand your situation. If an assignment makes sense, a proposal built around your challenges follows.
Yes. The investigation of a serious event, whether an accident or a high-potential near miss, goes further than classic methods such as cause tree analysis, the 5 Whys or the Ishikawa diagram, which follow linear chains of events. Drawing on AcciMap, organisational sociology and the way major disasters have been investigated, it traces back to the organisational choices and precursors that made the event possible.
Thirty minutes by phone or video call to understand what is at stake for you, with no commitment. I reply personally.
