Responding to risks

After identifying risks, we should start planning responses to them. What do you do when you know people need to work on floors that don’t have walls yet and someone may fall off?

A simple response is to add a new activity to the project to build temporary handrails as soon as the floor is built. That’s a good idea, but is that enough? Maybe we can do better. Can we limit what is done on those floors until the permanent walls are built? That requires making adjustments to our plan. While we do all of these, there may still be some unplanned, unnecessary traffic on those floors. To cope with that, we can have a health and safety training program for everyone. This can be a response to multiple related risks, which makes it even more interesting.

No matter what you do, there may be some accidents. If you have a large project, you can set up a first aid center with a nurse to reduce the immediate impact of injuries.

We have a social responsibility to make sure people are safe in the project. When we take all the reasonable actions, there’s still a chance that something will happen. The sad reality is that we can’t prevent all tragedies. So, the last step is to protect the project with a proper insurance policy so that if the tragedy does happen, at least there won’t be a big financial setback for the project.

What’s explained above is risk management: taking actions before uncertainties happen in order to reduce their probability or impact. Having proper risk management helps us reduce costs, improve our reputation, respect our social responsibility, and make the project more predictable.