Taking a risk
University of Technology, Sydney
FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
49006 RISK MANAGEMENT IN ENGINEERING
Assessment Tasks 2 & 3 – Spring Semester, 2014
Working in your allocated Group you will produce a Report and make a PowerPoint
type presentation of this Report to the class.
For the purposes of this assignment you are to consider your Group is a team within a
risk management consultancy employed by the Federal Government to produce a
report and present this report to National Press Club in Canberra. You are to consider
yourself a professional risk consultant employed within this consultancy that
specializes in risk management.
Electronic copies of the following files will be submitted at the start of the scheduled
lecture on the due date:
Group_X.docx report file;
Group_X.pptx file;
Group_X_notes.docx (presentation notes); and
pdf copies of all the refereed Journal articles labelled1 with the paper title (12+).
One hard copy of the report, presentation, and presenter’s notes shall also be
submitted at the start of the scheduled lecture on the due date.
No late submissions will be accepted.
Group Assignment – Report (20%)
The report will be a minimum of 6000 words in length and be formatted in accordance
with the 49006 Report Template.
It is anticipated that students will undertake professional theoretical research on the
allocated topic. It is expected that this research will extend beyond the material that
is presented in the Brief of Engagement, the Textbook (LRM), the Standards, and any
other engineering courses offered at UTS.
The report must include a variety of material that supports the discussion and all
content must be fully referenced.
1 PDF copies of all your references must be submitted in a folder on the presentation day. The reference files
shall to be labeled sequentially (eg Ol_Author_Title.pdf).
Marks will be awarded for reports that demonstrate a high level of professionalism and
well thought-out technical content. Marks will also be awarded for reports that show
logical and robust methodological argument that supports the discussion.
Marks will be deducted for reports that are unfocused and do not effectively address
the allocated topic or add value to the ‘Brief of Engagement’.
Also see ‘49006 Assessment Task 2 and 3 Marking Sheet’ for guidance.
Group Oral Presentation of Report (10%)
Your Group will make a 25 +0/-2 minute PowerPoint type presentation on your
allocated topic to the class.
The presentation order will be random and Groups that are not in attendance and
available to present will be penalised.
Marks will be awarded for the professionalism and technical content of this
presentation. Marks will be deducted for presentations that are unfocused and do not
effectively address or add value to the ‘Brief of Engagement’.
Marks will be deducted for presentations that are unstructured, lack clarity, miss the
intended audience, don’t address the appropriate areas of Risk Management and do
not submit speaker presentation notes. Marks will be deducted for presentations that
go overtime.
It is up to your group whether your presentation covers all of the topics chosen in the
report, or one or more of the failures discussed in your report.
Brief of Engagement: Taking a risk
We never grow or improve until we take a risk. Advancement and development
require taking risks. When we attempt something that has never been done before the
probability of failure is higher, but so are the rewards. Risk and change are the
flipsides of the same coin. Risk and change go together.
In a globally competitive world organisations need to be agile to survive. They need to
change and adapt. What happens when organisations purposely choose to change or
transform and put tight deadlines on the time period over which this must occur? In
risk management it is not simply the magnitude of the risk, but also the rate of change
of the risk ie dR/dt.
When asked what keeps them up at night, CEOs involved in change often say they are
concerned about how the work force will react, how they can get their team to work
together, and how they will be able to lead their people. They also worry about
retaining their company’s unique values and sense of identity and about creating a
culture of commitment and performance. Leadership teams that fail to plan for the human side of change often find themselves wondering why their best-laid plans have
gone awry.
No single methodology fits every organisation.
Identify and describe in detail three ‘Australian-based’ organisations that successfully
managed to grow by 300% over a 5-year period and succeeded by taking a risk and
changing.
[Identify and describe in detail three mirrorz ‘Australian-based’ organisations that did
not change and as a direct result of not adapting the businesses have not succeeded.
The organisations you choose must be organisations about which you can readily
obtain information. Preferably these organisations will have an engineering or
technical element to their core business.
In the context of risk management your discussion should consider the following:
How important was the human element to the success/failure?
Did the organisations benchmark KPIs so that they could measure the magnitude of
their change? What were there KPIs?
Did the organisations have a formal risk management process? Did this allow them
to prepare for the unexpected?
Did the organisations start the change process at the top and involve every layer of
the organisations? Did this have a bearing on the success/failure of the
organisations?
Did the organisations articulate why the change was necessary and instil a sense of
ownership and urgency throughout the organisations? Did this have a bearing on
success/ fai lure of the organisations?
Quantify 10 major risks for each organisation using an FMEA analysis and include an
FMEA table within the Appendix of your Report.
Quantify the tolerability of risk (ToR) for each organisation and include a ToR table
within the Appendix of your Report.
Detail the causal chain that led to the success/failure of each organisation (ie show
causality from the root cause(s) to the success/failure event) and provide a causal
diagram for each organisation in an Appendix to your Report.
For the failed organisation what could each organisation have done differently that
would have increased the likelihood of success?
For the successful organisations, would they have succeeded if they had not
changed? What would have been the magnitude of this compared to what was
achieved. Could they have taken a greater risk or dR/dt and increased their
success?
What should have been the barriers that prevented the failure occurring? Illustrate
the barriers using a Bowtie analysis and Bowtie diagram for each organisation in an
Appendix to your Report.
2 For each successful organisation choose a similar ‘mirror’ organisation that did not succeed. They may have
been the dominant player and no longer hold this position eg Kodak or Nokia.
What lessons can learnt from each success/failure? Were there common attributes
that led to success/ fai lure?
UTS reserves the right to use and/or disclose your assignment. If you use information
which your (current or former) employer could regard as confidential, clearly state
this on the first page. UTS will endeavour to protect all such information from
disclosure.
The signed cover sheet of your Group Assessment Tasks 2 & 3 should accurately reflect
the percentage contribution of each individual member of the Group. Normally this
percentage is equal. Where there is consensus that one or more member contributed
more, the percentage may be increased/decreased accordingly in line with the
respective contribution of each student. The total of all members should sum to 100%.
Where no percentage is nominated an equal contribution will be assumed.
Tolerability of risk (ToR)
The United Kingdom Health and Safety Executive (HSE)3 espoused a framework
otherwise known as tolerability of risk (TOR). TOR is used for worst-case
considerations, utility-based conditions that entail the societal unacceptability of risky
situations, and technology-based cases that tend to ignore the trade-offs between
benefits and costs.
The HSE includes principles that require risks to be reduced to as low as reasonably
practical (ALARP) and so far as is reasonably practicable (SFAIRP). This allows the cost
of reducing risks to be considered when determining whether to invest in a risk
reducing intervention. As a general principle, project owners are required to invest
proportionately higher levels of funds towards reducing higher risks, particularly for a
risk with severe consequences.
It is expected that the 3 failed organisations will be analysed to determine the costs
that should have been invested in change process to prevent the failure. For each of
these organisations, the potential profits calculated. The multiplier or ratio is used as
a measure to confirm whether the organisation should have invested more funds to
prevent this failure.
The ‘grossly disproportionate’ test applied to change process shall be discussed within
the Report.
3 Health Safety and Executive (2001), Reduczng Risks Protecting People HSE ’s decIsz’on-makmg process [Online], Available:
http:/,/\\W\W\’.hse.goV.uk/risldtheofy/r2p2pdf [Accessed Apr. 21, 2013].
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