A Formalised Approach to the Management of Risk

Abstract

Observations made while working with industry and government organisations have shown a number of issues with the implementation of current risk management best practice. A major issue in many cases is the lack of pragmatism associated with the risk management process and the need for a more formalised approach to risk management. In this paper, the authors propose and validate a multi-view approach to defining the processes required to carry out risk management. The formalised approach proposed includes a definition of risk, an ontology, a set of processes, and a pragmatic methodology, which shows an application of these processes enabling pro-active management of change. The ability of the processes to be applied to different types of risk has been demonstrated through a case study highlighting health and safety issues. Within the current engineering and economic climate this logical approach provides a visualisation which is consistent, repeatable, view based, and pragmatic.