When AS/NZS 4360:2004 was morphed into ISO 31000:2009, we somehow lost the “six rules of risk management” to a popular investment phrase, ‘risks and opportunities’. In the financial world, risk is a potential for a loss. Opportunity is a potential for a gain. Continue reading
Risk modeling is a useful tool for business continuity managers, but over-reliance and flawed approaches can create difficulties.
Introduction
Fundamental uncertainties derive from our fragmentary understanding of risk and complex system dynamics and interdependencies. Abundant stochastic variation in risk parameters further exacerbates the ability to clearly assess uncertainties. Continue reading
We can plan to do more than we are capable of accomplishing. The remaining items, if they warranty accomplishing become deferred. They roll over to the next’s day’s list of actions to take.
Of course, in practice, the process to plan, execute, and defer maintenance activities is a bit more complex than described above. The ability to maintain equipment in working order along with minimizing downtime and costs is in large part the balance between resources available to conduct maintenance and the increased risk of system failure due to deferred maintenance. Continue reading
Good communication; the effective and efficient issue and receipt of the right information, by the right parties, at the right time, and in the right medium allowing both timely responses and decisions. It’s easy on paper and in theory but oftentimes the ‘noise’ in the communication channels are blamed for ‘bad’ communication.
This ‘noise’ is attributed to the distractions of an inadequate meeting room, noisy neighbours, a flaky internet connection, black & white rather than colour copies, decentralised teams, and even international time differences. But are these just excuses rather than real reasons? Continue reading
T
his risk story involves a major subcontract that went awry impacting the program and one of my company’s growth goals. The goal was to become the sole provider to the Navy for a mine killing system comprising two major components. One is an underwater kill vehicle and the second one is a launcher (from a helicopter). To accomplish this goal, we landed a contract with the Navy to design, build and perform tests of a small quantity of units (called first article units). Continue reading