Willem Top

Portrait painted by Frank Top (2013)

I live in The Netherlands with my wife Marry and three children: son Frank and twin daughters: Marieke and Willemijn.

Through this website, I want to communicate some of my experience and ideas as a consultant in risk management, safety management and loss control. My experience has mainly been in the area of organizational development, safety auditing and performance improvement, issues that can easily be related to references such as OHSAS 18000, Seveso 2 and OSHA 1910.119. I have worked for insurers as well as insurance brokers, had my own safety management consultancy, worked for one of the international certification bodies and was the managing director of a fire fighting training school. My safety related experience covers almost 40 years and includes issues as safety management systems, safety management training, safety auditing, contractor safety, fire protection and accident investigation and analysis.

I have worked in the Europe safety/risk management scene since 1968. My basic education is in chemical and industrial engineering for which I got degrees in Holland. I received a major part of my risk management/safety management education in the USA. I have worked for several companies and had my own safety management consulting firm between 1985 and 1991.

I have been instrumental introducing the International Safety Rating System into Europe. I worked with the ISRS as a safety audit system and safety management reference for many years in the Benelux and assisted its introduction into other European countries. I worked with predecessors of the ISRS since the early seventies. This all happened after I met Mr. Frank E. Bird, Jr. when I started working with the Insurance Company of North America in 1968.

I had my own consulting firm under the name "Loss Control Center" (LCC) between 1985 and 1991 which was based on agreements that I had then with Mr. Frank Bird. When Mr. Bird sold his ILCI in 1991 to DNV (Det Norske Veritas), I followed him and sold my company also to DNV.

In 1989 I initiated and then assisted in the development of the contractor safety certification scheme called VCA (Veiligheids Checklist Aannemers) in Holland and Belgium and SCC (Safety Certification Contractors OR Sicherheits Certifikat Contractoren) in other parts of Europe. This scheme operates mainly on the European continent and is owned by the SSVV. VCA became the first accredited safety certification scheme in 1994. As per today about 10.000 VCA certificates are active in Holland and Belgium alone. I continue to work for the SSVV on a project-by-project basis.

Look at my CV for some further detail.

Friends at IRCA

At the start of my "safety career" in 1968 I met Mr Frank E. Bird Jr. when we both worked for the US Insurance Company which was then called INA (Insurance Company of North America). Mr. Bird worked at the INA World Head Office in Philadelphia and I worked at the European Head Office in Brussels. Our contacts remained after we both left INA in 1973 (for different reasons and without knowing that the other was leaving) and continued till Mr. Bird passed away in 2007. Frank Bird played an influential role - worldwide - in the area of safety management, loss control and risk management. He also had a substantial influence on my live and career. He founded the International Loss Control Institute (ILCI) in 1973/4 and was its President until he sold the company in 1991. From being business associates in the early seventies we became more than friends - no better way to express this is to say that my son is named after him and one of my daughters carries the name of his wife Esther.

David Bird is one of Frank's sons and few years ago decided to follow his father's footsteps when setting up IRCA (International Risk Control of America). It is because of my relation with the Bird family and ILCI that I am very happy to provide a hyperlink to David's IRCA. IRCA continues to build on the work of ILCI and David and his people would be happy to help you develop and implement your management system to improve safety and control of risks. They also provide the necessary training.

 We have many pictures that we took when visiting the Bird family in Loganville but let me stick to an "official one". Frank Bird in the middle and I with the dark glasses. The other people are from South Africa, Chili and Norway. Taken in 1989.