CERM® Risk Insights

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

It’s Not What You Look At – It’s What You See

It’s Not What You Look At – It’s What You See

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

Of course, we all know that knowledge is king, but how can we know which resources will deliver valuable insights? The internet has made each of us content creators and publishers if we want to be. According to Statistica, as of February 2020, more than 500 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute, which equates to approximately 30,000 hours of newly uploaded content per hour. (And of course, YouTube is not the only video platform! By some measures, TikTok is overtaking YouTube.) It’s safe to say that everyone wants to share their knowledge.

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Can Starting with Waterfall Lead to Better Agile?

Can Starting with Waterfall Lead to Better Agile?

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

We should all be aware by now that business agility is the primary enabler for companies seeking sustainability. In the past, companies would evolve in chunks, a project at a time. The costs and risks of implementing change, whether system-related or otherwise, were large, so designing and planning upfront (the Waterfall approach) was applied to create predictability and moderate risks.

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Project Assurances

Project Assurances

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

We have many kinds of assurance in the project management world. These, generically include business assurance to track the economic viability of a project, technical assurance for the technical integrity of a product, process or system, and user assurance to check that specified requirements have been met. Assurance demonstrates compliance to a project’s business case, meeting end user’s operational requirements, and that there is technical compliance against codes, standards or specifications.

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Effective Safety Communications

Effective Safety Communications

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

Recently, I was talking to the Managing Director of a large recruiting firm for safety professionals in Toronto about the importance of communication skills.

It was very clear that safety leaders are just expected to be experts in the technical aspects of safety, but it’s the ability to communicate about safety that sets apart the great safety leaders from the mediocre.

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Trouble Shooting or Shooting Troubled Projects

Trouble Shooting or Shooting Troubled Projects

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

The project hasn’t been going too well; KPI’s indicate problems, staff are demotivated, the customer is complaining, the schedule is in double digit revisions, rework and resubmissions reflect quality, and you may be on your third or even fourth project manager, and cash is all but flowing. Phew…what will happen next?

Despite these symptoms the project is allowed to struggle on until, one day, one brave soul has the courage to admit that enough is enough! The self-help applications of Band Aids and a couple of paracetamols obviously haven’t worked. Making an appointment to see your local GP or even a trip to the emergency room at this juncture may also be a tad late. It’s time for a surgeon or, in project terms, a troubleshooter.

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

ESG Risks

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

In a previous CERM Insights I mention ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Risk. The U.S. and European governments are starting to stress ESG risk management. This article looks at the proposed ESG requirements of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the implication for quality management.

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Creating a Successful Crisis Management Plan

Creating a Successful Crisis Management Plan

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

Safety Projects International Inc. discusses how to handle different types of crises that may arise at your facility. If 2020 has shown us anything, it’s that we need to adapt to outside elements that may affect your team processes and procedures. Let’s get started on a crisis management plan.

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Five Technology Trends in Manufacturing

Five Technology Trends in Manufacturing

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

Corporations that create in this world facilitate so many integral pieces to contemporary life by way of manufacturing. Manufacturing is quite literally a backbone to so many other industries, generating components for medical devices, automobiles, electronics, and machinery that keeps everything progressing forward. All of these components frequently need to be replaced, or more often upgraded thanks to new innovations that create new capabilities and in turn create new needs.

In addition, global supply chain shortages are driving a new wave of nearshoring to put manufacturing closer to customer locations. New manufacturing plants will utilize the latest technologies in an effort to increase productivity and competitive advantage. Due to the fact that technology-driven exponential change affects everything, manufacturing businesses must always keep up.

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Auditing Safety Management Systems

Auditing Safety Management Systems

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

In any given PSM audit, the auditors will usually face one or more situations that represent a dilemma because the situation has not happened before, or no thought has been given on how to resolve it. These dilemmas usually require the individual auditor and/or the audit team leader resolve the situation in the field. These “on the fly” resolutions require both astute judgment and practical solutions that fit not only the governing regulations or company/facility standards for PSM, but also how those mandatory requirements should be interpreted and applied to the specific design, operations, and PSM program of the facility being audited.

The PSM audit dilemmas described in this paper are based on the experiences of seasoned auditors during actual PSM audits. Several of them are PSM adaptations of those published by Safety Projects International Inc., et al in 5 Star Health & Safety Management System™ Health and Safety Audits. In general, there are no absolute right or wrong answers to solving these dilemmas, although in some cases a resolution might seem obvious.

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How to Create a Positive Risk Culture

How to Create a Positive Risk Culture

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

As the world begins to unevenly emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, people’s re-evaluation of their lives and work means employee engagement has been replaced by employee experience.

Employee experience is about the critical need for organisations to help people do and be their best. It is shaped by:

The work we do.
The teams we work in.
Our direct managers and how they coach and support us.
Our health and wellbeing.
The digital, physical, and cultural workplace.
How we grow and develop.
How much do we trust the organisation.

Even before the pandemic, the work environment was already challenging. Many studies have shown that people felt overwhelmed. They had little time to concentrate, to spend with their families, and there was no time to learn something new.

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Is Detailed Design Anti-Agile?

Is Detailed Design Anti-Agile?

Guest Post by Howard M. Wiener (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

In the Beginning . . .

In days of yore, systems development projects were front ended with laborious requirements engineering and design tasks. This made sense then because development was labor-intensive, time-consuming and expensive. Changes to the scope or design of a solution mid-development increased the likelihood of errors and incremental time and expense. In recognition of this, traditional Waterfall project management was applied, which created impediments to modifying the product definition once its development had begun. Changes were strenuously resisted.

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Roadblocks on the Way to Leadership

Roadblocks on the Way to Leadership

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

Black Lives Matter is a slogan that we see at major sporting events, and on social media, however it is a fact that female managers of color are five times more likely (21%) than their white female counterparts (4%) to say they have quit a job after being overlooked for a new leadership opportunity at work.

While it’s not really news that women and especially women of color are more likely to encounter roadblocks in the journey to a leadership role, it’s very disconcerting to how it’s affecting not just the women, but the companies that are losing out on this talent.

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Virtual Decisions: Art and Reality of Indecision

Virtual Decisions: Art and Reality of Indecision

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

“Any decision is better than No Decision” goes the Law of Decision making. However, sitting on the fence, humming and hawing, chewing the cud, weighing every option, exploring every avenue and leaving no stone unturned can, and often does, eventually amount to, at the end of the day, and in its cold light, without beating about the bush, or wasting any more time…indecision.

Indecision, at least for those affected, leads to a number of things including frustration, demotivation, and anger. These feelings are not felt by those who dwell in indecision as they are blissfully unaware and are ignorantly oblivious as to the adverse effects of their procrastination. They are also incognizant as to their responsibility for wasting everybody’s precious time as well as being bewilderingly ignorant that a definitive decision to do nothing may allow for some productive work elsewhere. But they would rather keep people on tenterhooks and in a state of limbo and avoid any gainful and concurrent activity. Productivity for them is of no consequence…people can always catch up later…or can they?!

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Why Agile Software Often Fails and What to Do About It

Why Agile Software Often Fails and What to Do About It

Guest Post by Howard M. Wiener (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

In the previous articles in this series, we discussed the role that agile digital delivery capabilities plays in your company’s competitiveness and why rapid delivery is so important. In this article, we will look at the many reasons that Agile adoptions frequently fail to deliver what companies expect and suggest some things that you should do to address them.

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Safety is Integral to Engineering Education

Safety is Integral to Engineering Education

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

All this knowledge, passed on for our Engineers, is of little use unless it reaches the right people. The individuals and institutions which educate the safety engineers and who will be responsible for the design and operation of plants handling hazardous materials have a duty to make their students aware of the hazards and at least to make a start in gaining competence in handling them.

As elsewhere in engineering, computers are in wide-spread use in the design of process plants, where computer aided design (CAD) covers physical properties, flow sheeting, piping and instrument diagrams, unit operations and plant layout. There is increasing use of computers for failure data retrieval and analysis, reliability and availability studies, fault tree analysis and consequence modelling, while more elusive safety expertise is being captured by computer-based expert systems.