Risk management team responsibilities – Stepping through the 5-phase strategic risk managing process (Part II)

May 21, 2010 by Mary Lewinson · Leave a Comment print-friendly

In Part I, three basic responsibilities of the risk management team have been listed and described. In Part II, the rest two responsibilities will be outlined.

So the responsibilities of the risk management workgroup cover the implementation of the five-step strategic risk management process. These process includes the final two steps:

1. Implement Risk Management Plan. It is the major duty of the team to formally adopt and implement a risk management plan example. The plan’s implementation starts with the risk management group distributing and explaining items of the plan to everyone affected by it. Although each member of the risk management workgroup has an opportunity to discuss the plan’s implementation and comment on its content (so appropriate advice and support can be provided), some special risk management training may be required. The members who have appropriate risk management education and competencies can guide those who have questions. Also certain employees and volunteers may be involved in risk management training activities in order to allow the team members meeting specific risk treatment and control responsibilities.

Review and Revise Risk Management Plan. During the implementation of the plan the risk manager in collaboration with risk analysts review the project activities, reviews status and progress of the identified risks, re-estimates existing threats and register new ones, in order to make the plan fitting new conditions of the risk management information system. For example, new risks can be initiated by such reasons as new client’s needs, funding constraints, and service delivery challenges. The dynamic of the risk management information system is determined by the dynamic of new risks’ occurrence. The risk manager should review existing risk management strategies regularly. The risk management team should evaluate an existing risk management plan example to ensure its continued appropriateness, comprehensiveness, and effectiveness (read more at Project Management Guidelines)

Risk Management Committee

In some projects and especially in business processes and activities, the risk management workgroup is identified as a risk management committee which has rather similar or the same duties and responsibilities. Such a committee may head the team and take strategic risk management decisions. The committee may have a more complicated organizational structure, be larger and include several additional (often secondary) positions. In addition to the team’s duties and responsibilities, the risk management committee takes responsibility for implementing the overall risk management methodology regarding all the functions and activities within the performing business company, including Investing, Marketing, Sales and Operations. Due to the wider responsibility, the risk management committee needs to employ experienced investment professionals, marketing analysts, sales specialists and operations officers who will assist the risk manager and the committee chair in implementing risk identification tools and risk assessment methods. All the responsibilities of the committee as well as roles and duties of its members will need to be identified and approved in the existing risk management information system.

Back to Part I of this articles.

Read More On This Topic:

• 9 Lessons of Effective Crisis Management for Project Managers
• The Planning Process – Ten Simple Steps to Planning a Project
• The Project Manager’s Top Five Sins, or How to Avoid Inefficiency in Managing Projects
• Deliverables Acceptance Management – Setting Criteria for Accepting Project Deliverables
• Key Components of Successful Project Management

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Filed under Project Management · Tagged with project risk, risk management team

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Risk management team responsibilities – Stepping through the 5-phase strategic risk managing process (Part II)

May 21, 2010 by Mary Lewinson · Leave a Comment print-friendly

In Part I, three basic responsibilities of the risk management team have been listed and described. In Part II, the rest two responsibilities will be outlined.

So the responsibilities of the risk management workgroup cover the implementation of the five-step strategic risk management process. These process includes the final two steps:

1. Implement Risk Management Plan. It is the major duty of the team to formally adopt and implement a risk management plan example. The plan’s implementation starts with the risk management group distributing and explaining items of the plan to everyone affected by it. Although each member of the risk management workgroup has an opportunity to discuss the plan’s implementation and comment on its content (so appropriate advice and support can be provided), some special risk management training may be required. The members who have appropriate risk management education and competencies can guide those who have questions. Also certain employees and volunteers may be involved in risk management training activities in order to allow the team members meeting specific risk treatment and control responsibilities.

Review and Revise Risk Management Plan. During the implementation of the plan the risk manager in collaboration with risk analysts review the project activities, reviews status and progress of the identified risks, re-estimates existing threats and register new ones, in order to make the plan fitting new conditions of the risk management information system. For example, new risks can be initiated by such reasons as new client’s needs, funding constraints, and service delivery challenges. The dynamic of the risk management information system is determined by the dynamic of new risks’ occurrence. The risk manager should review existing risk management strategies regularly. The risk management team should evaluate an existing risk management plan example to ensure its continued appropriateness, comprehensiveness, and effectiveness (read more at Project Management Guidelines)

Risk Management Committee

In some projects and especially in business processes and activities, the risk management workgroup is identified as a risk management committee which has rather similar or the same duties and responsibilities. Such a committee may head the team and take strategic risk management decisions. The committee may have a more complicated organizational structure, be larger and include several additional (often secondary) positions. In addition to the team’s duties and responsibilities, the risk management committee takes responsibility for implementing the overall risk management methodology regarding all the functions and activities within the performing business company, including Investing, Marketing, Sales and Operations. Due to the wider responsibility, the risk management committee needs to employ experienced investment professionals, marketing analysts, sales specialists and operations officers who will assist the risk manager and the committee chair in implementing risk identification tools and risk assessment methods. All the responsibilities of the committee as well as roles and duties of its members will need to be identified and approved in the existing risk management information system.

Back to Part I of this articles.

Read More On This Topic:

• 9 Lessons of Effective Crisis Management for Project Managers
• The Planning Process – Ten Simple Steps to Planning a Project
• The Project Manager’s Top Five Sins, or How to Avoid Inefficiency in Managing Projects
• Deliverables Acceptance Management – Setting Criteria for Accepting Project Deliverables
• Key Components of Successful Project Management

-->

Filed under Project Management · Tagged with project risk, risk management team

About Mary Lewinson

Speak Your Mind

Share |

Tell us what you're thinking...

Click here to cancel reply.

Why Work-Life Balance?

“Welcome to Dogbert’s seminar on work-life balance. First, review this list of your priorities: family, job, exercise, vacation, must-dos, medical, eating, hygiene, sleep, romance, holidays. You have time for three things. Work and holidays are two. You get to pick the third.”

 

While intended as humorous, this excerpt from a Dilbert cartoon relates how workers may think when they feel overextended by work obligations, leaving no time for personal and leisure activities that are important for employees’ overall health and well-being. Work-life balance issues aren’t just important for employees, though; they can affect employers as well. A 2008 study by Hudson Highland Group Inc of more than 1,500 U.S. workers reported that nearly a third considered work-life balance and flexibility to be the most important factor in considering job offers. In addition, The U.S. President’s Study of American Work-Life Balance (March 2010) states that work-life balance programs “can reduce turnover and improve recruitment, increasing the productivity of an employer’s workforce.  These practices are also associated with improved employee health and decreased absenteeism, a major cost for employers.”

To combat these issues, Constangy strives to cultivate an environment that helps employees achieve work-life balance.  Although the legal industry in particular has suffered from a reputation of poor work-life balance, this issue extends to many different industries and environments across the United States. 

So we may recognize companies that create and promote work environments conducive to work-life balance, Constangy established an award program in 2006 that recognizes outstanding work-life balance initiatives or programs either company-wide or inside corporate legal departments. Previously consisting of two separate awards, our program now recognizes achievements through its Excellence in Work-Life Balance Award.

If you would like to nominate your (or another) company that has implemented work-life balance into its culture, programs and initiatives, please apply for Constangy’s Excellence in Work-Life Balance Award.

Check out their website - http://www.constancy.com

A unique set of changes made to improve assembly of the 777 - good insights

A must read book

Interesting book

Todd Conklin, Ph.D., is senior advisor, environmental safety, health and quality, at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In this interview, Conklin discusses his views of human error in the workplace and how an understanding of human behavior and culture can help improve workplace safety.

Please provide a brief description of your professional background and of your position with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

I have been with the lab for about 22 years. I work in the safety improvements initiatives office. We work mostly with human performance and systems and align our organization toward the ability to learn from events.

My background is in organizational culture and behavior. I hold a doctorate in that area. When you work at a place like LANL, everyone has a Ph.D. The doctorate allows me to be a part of the crowd at LANL. LANL is a great place to look at the effects of our culture on worker behaviors.

I travel and am fortunate to get to work with many organizations and to help them understand the complexities of safety programs and cultures of organizations.

I also conduct investigations around the country, serving as the human performance “set of eyes” on the event understanding activity.

What are the most common misconceptions about human error in the workplace with respect to occupational injuries and accidents? How do these misconceptions vary among management and employees?

The one that bugs me the most is the belief that if you simply ask workers to try harder or to care more, that will somehow magically equate into some type of better outcome.

Error is just that, error. We cannot fix error by punishing people for doing something that they did not intend to do to have them come back to work the next day and not do something they did not mean to do in the first place. It does not make sense. In a way, asking or expecting workers not to make errors is not a problem that workers own—it is a problem that management owns.

Errors happen all the time. In fact errors happen in spite of us knowing that errors happen. Mostly, these errors do not create any type of problem, so we do not even realize an error happened until an error happens that has some type of consequence.

I strongly believe that we cannot (nor do we want to) stop errors from happening. What we can do is create survivable space around our workers. We want workers to fail; in fact, that is how we learn about our organization’s safety program and about the world around us. When they fail, we want a soft landing, a graceful failure. We want to defend against error outcomes, not the error itself.

How can an understanding of physiology help prevent human error and, in turn, injuries and accidents in the workplace?

I think one is better served by an understanding of human behavior and culture. Leaders create culture, and culture drives behavior.

Knowing how events happen is becoming much more important than knowing why events happen. That is controversial and flies in the face of the old-school way we have all been taught to understand events, the “why staircase” and all. It seems that the “how” question gets us to different levels of the failure story.

I am done with cause and blame, but I am super-interested in the story and how organizations tell those stories.

Do certain work environments increase the chance of human error? If so, what can be done to change these, especially if certain elements of a work environment appear to be beyond management’s and employees’ control?

That is a good question. I do not know about work environments per se, but workers’ performance modes (that is, how they think about doing the work they are about to do) dramatically impact the chance for error. I attended a meeting recently, and the person who introduced me said, “Error is.” I think he is right on that.

Based on your experience with organizational behavior, what approaches can be used to change perceptions of human error in the workplace?

Manage systems and behavior in parallel. Be fixated on where the next failure will happen. Reduce operational complexity. React aggressively to pre-event indicators. Respond deliberately to actual failure.

Do you believe standards, such as “Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems” (ANSI/AIHA Z10-2005), can help prevent human error?

Not prevent human error. We cannot really prevent error. Error is error. It is unintentional deviation from an expected outcome.

We must manage for the inevitable error that will happen. The good news is error happens often enough that we can learn from it.

Which industries do you believe can benefit the most from changing their perception of human error and its impact on human performance?

Probably all of us can benefit from better organizational learning. I cannot think of an industry that would not want to get better and be more effective.

Once an organization has changed its perception of human error and its relationship to workplace safety, how soon can the organization expect to see a difference in injury and accident rates?

It is a journey, but if I can get an organization to do one thing, I see quick results. Move from a crime-and-punishment view of safety to more of a diagnose-and-treat model.

If you change the way you investigate failures, you will change the way you manage safety. It is that simple, and it works. We must care more about learning from events than we do about finding blame.      

What aspects of human error and workplace safety do you feel warrant further research and study?

We have just started this ride, and we have many places to go in this field. What interests me is the difference between the way we plan, program and imagine how the job will be done and the actual work that workers face when they get to the jobsite. We have convinced ourselves to believe that if we can identify all hazards on a job we can do the job safely. The only problem with that idea is that we cannot see into the future, so we never know everything that will fail until it fails.

Sidney Dekker’s new book on drifting into failure is also interesting as are complex-adaptive behaviors, or problem-solving, in the field.

I am so excited to invite other people into this thought community. We need you to think about error and failure right along with us.

Todd Conklin, Ph.D., is senior advisor, environmental safety, health and quality, at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, NM. He may be contacted at bigtodd@lanl.gov or (505) 665-8650.

Speaker at ASSE Conference, San Antonio

1. Electronic Risk Score Calculator

1. Download Here: Risk Score Calculator (11721)

Electronic Risk Score Calculator

Risk Score Nomograms are based on OHS Risk Assessment AS/NZS 4804:2001 and contained in HB205-2004 OHS Risk Management Handbook. The Ratings used for the Risk Calculation have been adapted from Fine, Journal of Safety Research 1971 page-159. The risk assessment calculator is intended as a guide to identify level of risk. The risk score so calculated should be interpreted with caution.  It should only be used as a basis for consistency of reasoned judgment.

• Consequences are defined as the most probable result of the potential incident.
• Exposure is defined as the frequency of exposure to the hazard.
• Likelihood is that the complete sequence of events leading up to consequences will occur upon exposure to the hazard

The aim of the Risk Rating or Scoring System is to have a consistent standard across an organisation for rating risks. This is a legislative requirement in most jurisdictions and a criteria for self insurers to be met as part of an organisations self insurer licence. The outcome of applying a consistent risk rating system across the organisation will be improved decision making in choosing appropriate, adequate risk control measures leading to more effective management of risks and prevention of injury and property and environmental damage.

The company name and text in the tool can be modified by us to suit your own specific needs Contact us for details

Click here to download the free working version (# downloads): Risk Score Calculator (11721)

2. Risk Control Cost Justification Tool (new!)

To complement of very popular (nearly 11,000 downloads!) Electronic Risk Score Calculator (or nomogram) we have just developed the Riskex Electronic Cost Justification Calculator. Still a few refinements required and maybe a few bugs but we’ll wait until we get some feed back before perfecting it. Please remember that this tool is just an aid to assist with decision making and all risks and possible controls should be properly analysed as part of the decision making process. If you could apply it to some real life scenarios and give us some feedback that would be much appreciated. Download Here: Cost Justification Calculator (453)

Riskex Cost Justification Calculator

3. AS4801 Contractor Audit Tool

Use this comprehensive tool to evaluate your contractor’s OHS system utilising the framework of AS/NZS 4801:2001

Download here:   AS4801 Contractor Audit Tool (744)

4. Manual Handling Risk Assessment Template

Use this tool to assess manual handling tasks and comply with Manual Handling Code of Practice

Download here:   Manual Handling Risk Assessment Tool (666)

5. Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist

This is probably one of the most comprehensive safety risk and risk assessment checklists related to hotels and resorts that you are going to find. All aspects of hotel and resort management are covered.

Download here:   Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist (166)

6. Public Liability Risk Manual

Use this as a start to developing procedures for your shopping centre or mall. Covers maintenance, risk assessment, incident management, the theory of liability, legislation, checklists and contractor management.

Download here:   Public Liability Risk Management Manual (191)

7. Insulated Sandwich Panel Procedure

The purpose of the ISP Work Procedures is to ensure that any work carried out on ISP follows the appropriate Standard Work Procedure. To ensure that your assets and property are not put at risk when work is required on ISP.  The work procedures must be followed regardless of the scale of work.

Download Here: Insulated Sandwich Panel Procedure (76)

8. AS4801 Document Review Tool

Use this tool to assess your safety management system documentation against the requirements of AS/NZS 4801:2001 Occupational health and safety management systems

Riskex can provide any further assistance with completing this review

Download Here: AS4801 Document Review Audit Tool (360)

Tools for review and possible use from Safety and Risk Management at http://www.safetyrisk.com.au/free-downloads/

#Nathans_JHA

Chicago, Illinois – Chevrolet and OnStar have announced a joint effort with the U.S. National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) to provide training for first responders on electric vehicles (EV).

Chevrolet demonstrated safety techniques on the 2011 Volt range-extended EV at the Fire-Rescue International Conference in Chicago.

The collaboration stems from an EV safety training initiative NFPA is developing to support the growing number of EVs in the United States. The initiative, funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, will include a series of EV emergency response safety programs, providing information that first responders need to most effectively deal with emergency situations involving EV technology.

NFPA will be reaching out to other auto manufacturers in an effort to include vehicle-specific information in training as more electric vehicles enter the marketplace.

A new risk and hazard for first responders

Guest post by Cloyd Hyten,
Senior Consultant, ADI

 

All of the talk lately has been focused on ‘what went wrong’ to create what turned out to be disastrous work environments in the case of BP’s Deepwater Horizon well explosion in the Gulf and the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion in West Virginia. For the last several decades, many companies have turned to Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) systems to enhance their safety culture and reduce incidents and injuries.  When these systems are designed and functioning well, evidence shows that they are quite effective in improving safe habits, communication of safety concerns, and the resulting safety outcomes (see Turnbeaugh, T. 2010, March. Improving business outcomes: Behavior-based safety techniques can influence organizational performance. Professional Safety, 55(3), 41-49). But there are many factors that can reduce the effectiveness of BBS systems, and they can pop up early in implementation or many years into the process.  One of the key elements to an effective process is identifying sound behavior pinpoints.

BBS Systems are only as good as the behaviors targeted for improvement.  A common problem in BBS implementation occurs when participants select behaviors just because they are easy to observe (e.g., wearing safety glasses), or because they are easy choices in that failing to behave won’t draw management fire (e.g., keeping ladders properly stored).  This may mean that participants are avoiding the more serious behaviors – those that would help them be truly safer in their jobs – just to quickly generate behavior pinpoints to start working on.  Such practices might be acceptable in the first round of behavior pinpointing as a step in learning to observe fellow workers and give feedback to them, but if participants don’t quickly move on to more serious behaviors the entire process is at risk of being trivialized.

Hazard-driven pinpointing:  To pick behaviors worthy of everyone’s time and effort, the pinpointing process must start with the hazards present in the job.  Safety professionals together with workers from each functional area need to identify the most serious risks to personal safety or to process safety.  Many companies already do some form of Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) which identifies hazards and control measures that can be taken to eliminate or mitigate those risks.  Recent and thorough JHAs can supply the hazard lists for each job.  In the absence of a JHA, incident and near-miss data can reveal at least some of the more likely risks.  Of course, incident data tells you what has happened, not what might happen, and typical incident records tend to skew toward the more common but less severe injuries (e.g., strains and sprains).  Examining only incident data won’t reveal the less likely but potentially catastrophic risks (e.g. fires, explosions, leaks of harmful chemicals).

Hazard controls:  Once a list of hazards has been identified, participants need to examine existing control strategies.  If the hazard can be eliminated entirely through job or equipment redesign, and it is practical to do so, this should be the first choice.  If the hazard cannot be eliminated, other controls must be in place such as warning systems, interlocks, permitting procedures, equipment guards, special tools, personal protective equipment (PPE), safe job procedures, etc. It is crucial to realize that each of these controls relies on the behavior of operators and/or maintenance people to function properly and reduce the risk of an incident.  Therefore, the final safety control strategy must include personal protective behavior (PPB) as a component. 

PPBs:   To maximize safety, workers will need to do things; things like, but not limited to:

• Heed warning systems
• Use proper tools properly
• Follow safe procedures without taking risky shortcuts
• Wear PPE
• Ask for help when lifting heavy or awkward objects
• Do safety scans before starting the job
• Repair equipment critical to safety in a timely manner

BBS participants should select serious hazards to address and the critical behaviors necessary to make safety controls effective and reduce the risk of injury or incident.  Identifying hazards first can prevent falling into the trap of picking behaviors that won’t truly improve safety.  Hazard-driven pinpointing will take more time than simply asking, “Anybody have ideas for our next behavior?” but the payoff will come in a more robust BBS process that can lead to meaningful improvements in safety.

Related posts:

1. Texting & Driving Debate Puts Spotlight on Behavior-Based Safety This graphic video on the dangers of texting and driving has...
2. Employees have spoken…fear and failed leadership prove disastrous in safety Guest post by Judy Agnew. Finally, we hear the truth!...
3. What IS Behavior-Based Safety? For the past few months, I’ve been working on a...

I like the approach to behavioral concepts used by Aubrey Daniels. He outlines these in his books, "Performance Management" and "Other Peoples' Habits". Behavior issues and concerns must be factored into the Job Hazard Analysis Process.
Nathan