Risk Demystified

The Health and Safety Representatives committee held a demystifying Risk Workshop in early November. This workshop featured Kristin Hoskins from Worley. Kristin is a Board member of RiskNZ, and has significant overseas experience in emergency management, risk policy, natural hazards, and high hazard contingency response planning. Locally she was involved with the risk assessment and management of the Evans Pass road project and is a member of the Charter Professional Services working group.

Kristin began with idea that all risk can be quantified, and that perception of risk can be different for the client, contractor or worker. She then introduced some basic risk assessment frameworks, including the swiss-cheese model of risk control, and then the bow tie of pre and post event control and harm minimisation. In fact, Kristin knew of 31 different risk assessment techniques including more complex tools like probability trees.

The participants were then taken through real life examples using risk assessment matrices, with some often-surprising differences in risk level assessment between the groups. The groups were then taken through some analysis and control steps, with the key takeaway being re assessment of the risk with the control in place.

She then mentioned the importance of specific site assessment rather than generic, and the recognition that risk can change due to a wide range of variables.

The feedback from the participants was overwhelmingly positive, with 90% indicated they left with improved risk assessment capability. The group work with a range of people and roles was mentioned several times as being particularly insightful. A special thankyou to Kristin and the HSR Working Group for the work they did in running this event for the Charter.