Risk Management — a maturity approach is challenging the old company view
By: Sword Grc
Tags: Risk Management, Risk, Risk Management Software, Project Risk, Grc Software Solutions

Risk Management — a maturity approach is challenging the old company view Sword GRC Jul 2·4 min read

We recently held a roundtable event in Toronto where we welcomed risk management professionals from across many industries including transportation, utilities, engineering, energy, and construction. It was a great chance to discuss amongst peers how we apply the risk management discipline, sharing best practice and ideas. What made our event unique was our cross-industry approach — unlike many events which are often business-specific.

We were delighted with the feedback received — attendees stated that they had gained real value from being able to discuss just the topic of risk in open conversations and how they approach and manage it within their organization. Many were risk managers already working on a large scale, high profile $3–5bn enterprise projects, where poor risk management can have a huge impact on costs and reputational damage. Indeed a number of the organizations attending were part of the same supply chains helping to deliver major programmes in Canada and they found it extremely helpful to be able to discuss risk across major consortiums without the constraints often imposed by contracts and the formality of structures programme meetings.

Reflecting on the event we found that there were five issues that emerged from the discussion.

The risk management process and reporting

The first was simply that the opportunity to share best practice was welcomed — how others approach risk management in their organizations, the challenges, and the successes that they have achieved.

Another common theme was the Request for Services Proposal documents and the type of statements about the risk that are built into major project tenders. While project owners may include a brief section on the need for contractors to have robust risk management processes, when the owners ask these same contractors to report on risk management, they find themselves unable to deliver the detail that is required.

What is evident is that it needs to be clear upfront what is expected from a risk management process by the owners and that means articulating this from the start, through the contractor network.

Setting out standards

Out of this came the third notion of creating a consortium to manage risk — setting out standards of how risk would be managed and reported against. Creating clear standards in this way would also enable contractors to match their competencies against the risk management practices and performance levels outlined.

Indeed, representatives from two major contractors at our event shared the view that having a robust risk process in place is what differentiates them from others and gives them a competitive edge.

It’s a board-level issue — not just for risk managers

The fourth take out was that it is becoming increasingly commonplace for business leads to report on risk management to the board. So, not only is it on the board agenda, it is now being owned by the heads of each business line reporting performance to the board and not by the risk team.

Finally, as part of the objective of increasing risk maturity within their organizations to deliver increased value, risk managers are taking the bull by the horns and leading as educators on the importance of risk management to their organizations. To achieve the relevant understanding of the importance of risk-based discussions across the business we are seeing the risk teams bring in legal advisors, consultants, and cross-functional teams to increase awareness and train departments and board members on risk management and the significance of this to the health and wealth of the company.

There is no doubt that there already is a degree of maturity in risk management in large, project-based organizations. But importantly, today risk management and risk managers are no longer operating in a silo in the company. Risk Management is starting to become an enterprise concern.

We will be exploring some of these themes in future articles and, of course, look forward to holding more similar events in the future.

About Sword GRC

Sword GRC provides an award-winning platform for Governance, Risk and Compliance, made up of best-of-breed solutions that address the requirements of all enterprise market sectors. With a long and distinguished heritage, Sword GRC brings together a suite of complementary products in the GRC space available either as a cloud solution or standalone on-premises installations.

With a strong focus on driving fast time to value, and harnessing the latest technologies, Sword GRC delivers a versatile range of solutions that support better business decisions through a single view of risk to support enterprise-wide risk-based compliance. The Sword GRC product set covers Risk, Audit, Compliance, Policy Management and Incident Management.

Sword GRC has offices in the UK, USA, Malaysia and Australia, servicing customers worldwide directly and through a growing network of partners.

For more information please visit: Sword GRC

Get in touch:

Keith Ricketts, VP of Marketing

E: keith.ricketts@sword-grc.com

M: 07894 608435