About me
I am currently a PhD student with the Joint Centre for Disaster Research (JCDR) at Massey University researching safety leadership and risk management in the emergency management sector. My special interest area is how health or safety risks to first responders, particularly volunteers, are managed.
I have more than two decades experience as a professional specialising in preventing harm to workers and others within high-risk operations. I believe prevention is better than the cure, so I promote and support risk reduction whenever I can. I bring both strategic vision and operational capability to clients across a range of sectors (manufacturing, critical infrastructure, primary industry, transport/logistics, local government).
Complex high-risk operations and natural hazard events present multiple risks to workers so readiness to respond to an emergency or disaster is critically important. I have a deep understanding of workplace and public safety legislation and specialise in capability building of people and organisations through training and exercising, response planning and use of technology.
I am also an emergency management trainer with EMTC and a volunteer with Civil Defence and Taskforce Kiwi. In these roles I often work in response and recovery operations to support impacted communities following natural hazard events. I believe in the power of community and promote volunteering in all its forms as #volunteersmakeadifference every day. Volunteers power New Zealand’s emergency management sector (as well as many others), making up >80% of our frontline workforce in disasters.
My personal and professional mission is the same: To contribute to knowledge and capability development to prevent harm, to preserve life and livelihood, and to protect the vulnerable.
In all capacities (professional, voluntary and academic) I like to work on complex real-world problems to reduce risk, increase readiness and enable effective response when needed to ensure our people and communities are valued and protected.
*My professional work is via my company Planit Works Ltd which trades as Planit Safe. I have long-term valued clients who I am grateful to work with and I am currently not seeking new clients while I focus on my PhD.
Publications
Gillman, M. (2026). New Zealand’s AF8 earthquake up close: What an Alpine Fault rupture means for Australians. National Emergency Response Journal, 39(1), 63-67. https://www.aies.net.au/content/media/ner/national_emergency_response_vol_39_iss_1_autumn_26.pdf
Gillman, M., & Pillay, M. (2018). An integrative literature review: What are the barriers that stop organisations from learning the lessons highlighted in serious incident investigations? In P. Arezes (Ed.), Advances in Safety Management and Human Factors (pp. 627-634). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60525-8_63