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We’re not extinct yet

I was encouraged by Matthew Leitch’s taxonomy of bad behaviour to drag up a list of bad arguments I pulled together for a book that didn’t get published some time ago.  I thought it might contribute to the risk culture debate.  The abortive book was on climate risk and now I look back I see that the discussion was unsurprisingly climate-focussed. […]

More for your money

I promised to review the Infrastructure Risk Group report on Managing Cost Risk & Uncertainty In Infrastructure Projects, a report which was launched last month at the ICE with the sponsorship of the IRM. The report is a result of work undertaken as part of the Infrastructure UK investigation of the high cost of infrastructure projects.  […]

Risk in NEC3

I’ve been doing some much-needed professional development by finally getting properly up to speed on NEC3.  This is what was formerly known as the New Engineering Contract – like BAA the letters don’t stand for anything anymore – which was designed to simplify the way construction projects were commissioned and managed.  NEC3 is the most […]

What you’ve been waiting for

Matthew Leitch asked me to summarise my last two posts about risk definitions. I said it would take 5 minutes, but as I scoped it out I realised that a lot was involved to provide a proper explanation. Eventually I developed Prezi presentation with a voiceover to cover the explanations. It’s very boring so I’m […]

Pedant’s Corner (2)

This is the second post on risk definitions in the context of risk management standards.  Here we are moving on to risk governance, the outer level of the three risk management processes I proposed some time ago. In that previous work I suggested there should be three main components of a risk policy, the document […]

Resilience (Part 2): aircraft carriers on the lawn

In the previous article I explored resilience in the way it is described in the WEF global risk report.  It was hard to find much that distinguished it from a conventional risk management approach – listing actions against risks – apart from: a recognition that things look different at different scales – the global uncertainty […]

We need to talk

I’m getting sidetracked trying to write an article on resilience.  One of the hares I’ve chased is Robert Kaplan’s and Anette Mikes’ discussion of three types of risk.  This is because it is asserted by the World Economic Forum’s risk report to recommend resilience as the correct approach to long-term global risks.  Turns out it […]

Proud to be a war quant

I’ve just re-read Douglas W Hubbard’s The Failure of Risk Management.  It’s an odd book in that while I agree with most of what’s in it, I’m not particularly convinced by the overall story suggested by the subtitle: Why It’s Broken and How to Fix It. Hubbard’s theme is that we do not do enough, […]

It’s a risky world, just ask anyone

Last week the Institute of Risk Management North West regional group held a meeting on Adapting to the Global Risk Landscape.  The intention was to talk about some of the most serious long term risks and what we should be doing about them.  There’s a write up of the meeting appearing shortly on the IRM website, but […]

Fragility management

I reviewed Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book Antifragility with the promise to look separately at what the lessons might be for organisational risk management.  The answer is quite a bit, and this article will just be an initial high level view.  The thinking is developed pretty uncritically from the book.  There will be plenty of scope […]