on Risk & Safety

Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Abraham Lincoln is attributed to have famously said “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”  A more recent US President coined a more manipulative spin on Lincoln’s erudite words… “You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.”  Preying on ignorance is a human trait which, although frowned upon, certainly thrived in history, and definitely thrives today.

Guest Post by Peter Holtmann (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

This article is the eleventh of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.

In previous articles we’ve looked at the core elements of the risk management framework, as well as the role of leadership and commitment, integration, design, implementation, evaluation and improvement more specifically. We’ve also briefly looked at the risk management process in a general sense, and we’ve also focused on the importance of communication and consultation, as well as how to set your scope, context and criteria. In this article, we’ll be looking at risk assessments and the role of risk identification, analysis and evaluation in such assessments.

Guest Post by James Kline (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

The 2022 Global Risk Report is the 17^th risk assessment report. The preface to the report notes: “The 17^th edition of the Global Risk Report identifies tensions that will results from diverging trajectories and approaches within and between countries and then examines the risk that could arise from such tensions.” (1)

The results of the survey have substantive implications as the above notes. These implications go beyond diverging trajectories and approaches, to something more fundamental. That is whether the survey has any probative value.  This piece discusses the results of the survey. It also examines its probative value.

Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

The term “deadline” hasn’t been around that long, about 160 years in fact.  The first written mentions were in 1863 during the American Civil War.  The “dead-line”, as then, was defined as “a line drawn within or around a prison that a prisoner passes at the risk of being shot” and shot dead at that.  Prison conditions could be so deplorable that some men crossed the line on purpose, some survivors wrote that they had wished they’d crossed it to end their misery.  Deadlines in those days were lessons in ultimate liability.

Guest Post by Bill Pomfret (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Investigations of industrial accidents have found that a large number occurred during an interruption of production while an operator was trying to maintain or restart production. In each case the dangerous situation was created by a desire to save time and ease operations. In each case, the company’s safety rules were violated.

The best and most redundant safety layers can be defeated by poor or conflicting management practices. Numerous examples have been documented in the chemical industry. One accident in a polymer processing plant occurred after operations bypassed all alarms and interlocks to increase production by 5%. In another, interlocks and alarms failed—at a normal rate—but this was not known because management had decided to eliminate regular maintenance checks of the safety instrumentation.

Guest Post by Peter Holtmann (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

This article is the tenth of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.

Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Smaller organisations, especially those with less than 100 people, often struggle with putting in place the right-size effective risk management practices that do not take up too much of their time and resources.

What I have often seen and experienced is that small-size organisations implement the ‘standard’ risk management practices that are commonly found in larger organisations without much thought as to whether it is fit-for-purpose to enable better organisational performance given their unique context or operating environment.

Guest Post by Peter Holtmann (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

This article is the ninth of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.

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