Shouldn't We De-risk and Optimize First?

Karen's career has taken her through various roles within the extractives industry, with a heavy focus on managing and executing projects involving the characterization and mitigation of environmental risks and opportunities. She offers strategic direction, consulting, training and implementation services in the realms of embedding sustainability goals and environmental assessment requirements into business operations, strategic plans, decision making processes, and project plans and execution.

  Manufacturing   Risk Management  

Everything comes with some form of risk. But why do we focus on risk management before we have eliminated as much of it as we can?

As most commonly demonstrated, the concept of risk management conveys an automatic acceptance of risks, an exercise performed to ensure we are identifying and managing our project risks, controlling them in some way.

What of our goals?
Shouldn't our goal always be to deliver what our clients want with as little risk as possible? To deliver a high-value, efficient and quality-centered product?

Because the reality is, while clients may decide to accept risks associated with initiating a project, they will most likely want it in its most valuable form and fashion, and with the least amount of potential liability—even if this has not been explicitly stated.

And while the process of risk management leads one to avoid risks when possible (or to transfer them to others), it seems that the process is either not initiated early enough, or that it is not integrated with planning in a way that would facilitate a more holistic de-risk and optimization sequence.

The typical process
Often, our projects move rapidly through initiation and planning, and a process flow is drafted for analysis and execution. The plan, component by component, is assessed for risks to successful completion and…

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