Delfland and Vechtstromen embrace Communicative Risk Management

Hoogheemraadschap van Delfland and Waterschap Vechtstromen wanted to be more efficient in their risk-driven work. Therefore, they tried Communicative Risk Management. What does this entail? And what are their findings?

^{What does "risk-based working" mean?}

It is a well-known phenomenon: "risk-based working". The aim is to better manage uncertainties, ultimately reducing the probability of failure and failure costs of projects. However, Hoogheemraadschap van Delfland and Waterschap Vechtstromen wanted to prevent the change to risk-driven working from leading to endless discussions in the form of many risk sessions with several employees and expensive external forces, and decided to try out the vision and working method behind Communicative Risk Management. The need was expressed to make risk-driven working concrete and to make deployed actions easily discussable. For the parties, it is important to focus on risk management as a joint responsibility.  

Communicative risk management supports this idea by also emphasising 'together' and creating energy in the group to deal with risks (something that can often be perceived negatively anyway). A vision founded on the idea of tackling the right issue, at the right time and with the right employees, removing uncertainties and achieving efficiency in the risk management process.

Risk management, according to ISO31000 (the international standard for risk management), is defined as "The effect of uncertainty on objectives". This can therefore include a positive or negative effect on organisational or project objectives. With this, the ISO no longer distinguishes between the used terms of risk and opportunity management. Precisely in this, in applying Communicative Risk Management in accordance with the standards of ISO31000, risk-conscious organisations stand out from the rest!

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Communicative risk management

‍The risk management process in many organisations involves periodically updating the risk file. Going through the list with a group of stakeholders and adding or modifying what is needed. Then this risk file ends up in oblivion until the next update. However, the information from the file is used for reporting, which can lead to management adjustments. The big difference between performing a regular risk management process as described above and applying Communicative Risk Management lies in three aspects: awareness, simplicity and effectiveness in communication and insight at all levels.

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The 6 aspects of a risk:

• Awareness

Humans have a tendency to ignore clear signals about the presence of potential anomalies. This stems from standardised working and thinking patterns and preferring to live in a predictable world. Awareness of the presence of both 'Small chance, big consequence' and 'Big chance, small consequence' risks is step 1 in thinking in terms of uncertainties, scenarios and possible measures to take.

This awareness can be created by talking to people from different backgrounds and levels, about different topics. Feel free to call this a risk session! Let everyone have their input, without value judgements. Communicating about the potential undesirable events without trivialising them is an art in itself and therefore requires an experienced discussion leader and interactive tooling. Make it accessible for every stakeholder to be able to give his/her input. This makes communication about uncertainties accessible and efficient.

• ‍Simplicity and effectiveness in communication‍
  

Despite the preceding aspect of creating awareness, risk communication should adhere to the KISS principle: Keep-It-Stupid-Simple. Formulate the risks, causes and consequences as they are and make them as striking and tangible as possible. That makes it many times easier to then think about preventive measures (to avoid causes) or mitigating measures (impact-reducing), implement and monitor them.

Subsequently, it is also easier to share this information because differences in interpretation are nil. To avoid ending up with large amounts of risks, prioritisation and quantification can be applied, but this does not mean that the measures listed for low-scoring risks should not be implemented or can be monitored. Also when prioritising, use multiple insights from multiple levels to arrive at an accurate picture. Next, ensure in a (semi-)automated way that every action holder is informed on time about upcoming deadlines. Discuss upcoming action deadlines as the first item on the agenda at (project) team meetings.

• Understanding at all levels

Information related to the named possible events, scenarios and measures to be taken should be accessible at every level. Anyone should be able to contribute and share their additions to it. Therefore, position the risk management function at an organisation as 'a needle that pierces through the organisation'. This function should have a mandate at both strategic, tactical and operational levels. And, also know, that provided this prick is timely, it does not hurt, but offers protection in times of adversity.

Waterschap Vechtstromen – PowerUser RiskChallenger‍

‍Already in 2019, Waterschap Vechtstromen realised, that risk-driven working means more than keeping a risk file. "We discovered that when we took the risk file in hand more often, that control was more and better than with regular periodic risk sessions," said Klaas Dijkstra, project control consultant at Waterschap Vechtstromen. "However, that was not actually risk-driven work, but more doing of the same. We were looking to improve efficiency and awareness. Applying Communicative Risk Management has made all the difference in that."

Waterschap Vechtstromen has been successfully applying this vision and RiskChallenger's associated tooling since 2020. Linda Schoppink, Project Management Advisor at the Water Board explains, "The explanation of the vision and the use of the tool has really helped us accelerate the development of risk management within the Water Board. In addition, the service level from RiskChallenger was optimal, whether it was risk management-related questions, or technical questions related to the tooling: always accessible, fast and substantively good."

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Hoogheemraadschap Delfland – Innovation partner RiskChallenger

‍Where Waterschap Vechtstromen was mainly looking for efficiency and awareness within the risk management process, Hoogheemraadschap Delfland mainly wanted to bring forward innovation within the field and, based on demonstrable results of that innovation, to get the noses within the organisation pointing in the same direction and to improve the process organisation-wide. For this reason, they entered into an innovation partnership with RiskChallenger in 2021.

This meant not only applying the vision of communicative risk management and the RiskChallenger tooling, but also exchanging best practices, participating in workshops and mutual openness on areas of improvement of the approach and tooling. "Thanks to the deployment of the tooling and its focus on facilitating a positive and focused conversation, we see more support for the risk management process in general as well as for the risks in the projects themselves. For an organisation that wants to develop in this field, a partner like RiskChallenger, which is always available for technical questions, thinks along in the preparation of sessions or provides input for our vision and working method of risk management, is perfect," says Hélène van Heijningen, manager project management at Hoogheemraadschap van Delfland.

Many other organisations in the construction and infrastructure market (including Boskalis, Van Oord, BAM, Heijmans, TenneT, Rijkswaterstaat, ProRail and Alliander) are embracing the method of Communicative Risk Management. "Implementing Communicative Risk Management in line with RISMAN or the ISO31000 goes beyond just using the tool, but it is certainly not complicated! You just have to do it," says Harry Steenwijk, the creator of RiskChallenger's vision and software on communicative risk management.