Your Role as a Council Engineer
Abstract
Risk management, value management, quality management, benchmarking practice and other management initiatives proposed for use by enterprise and Council managers alike need to be carefully evaluated to determine necessary input, effectiveness and benefits.
Many managers considered these methodologies were just labels for practices they had already been following, but introduced a significant amount of additional paperwork into the process. The manager of a mid sized civil engineering contracting firm once told me "we practice quality assurance because we do compaction testing". Just as quality management comprises more than the acquisition of test results so too does risk management comprise more than an insurance check when you are feeling vulnerable.
The Australian Standard on Risk Management, AS4360, makes the definition quite clear. "Risk management is the term applied to a logical and systematic method of identifying, analysing, assessing, treating, monitoring and communicating risks associated with any activity, function or process in a way that will enable organisations to minimise losses and maximise opportunities."
In a time of growing need for accountability, Councils need not only to fully understand the concept of risk management but also develop or adopt tools that assist in the process.
This paper explores the benefits of the involvement of engineering management in systematically addressing the elements of risk in a Councils’ everyday core operations.
Throughout the paper, reference will be made to the risk management tool KnowRisk®. KnowRisk® is a sophisticated relational database developed in Australia to meet the risk management needs of industry in complying with the requirement of AS4360. The software exceeds the requirements of the Standard. It is a generic risk management tool suitable for use in any part of any organisation. It is fully customisable to fit the requirements of the user, rather than the user having to adapt to the software. With numerous wizards and pre-configured yet amendable formats, it is simple to use and achieve results.