Posts about stuff relating to airports
NOTAM System Failure: Not What-If but When?
Over ten years ago, I posted a short recommendation that aerodrome operators should consider the risk of a NOTAM system failure. While even I may have considered such a thing a bit of a black swan event, this scenario recently played out in the United States and Canada. Obviously, plenty of people in the FAA and NAV Canada will be working on avoiding a repeat of these events, aerodrome operators should take the time to review want happened for their own lessons learned.
ASW #1: COVID-19 & Safety: A Bow-Tie Risk Assessment Approach
Today’s theme is “maintaining airport safety through COVID-19”. Obviously, this can be a big topic. There are thousands of ways COVID-19 has impacted our daily lives - some large and some subtle. So, in thinking about this topic, I wanted to create a structure we could use to analyse the virus’s impact.
And I landed on the Bow-Tie model. Check it out.
Header: Karolina Grabowska (via Pexels)
Better Safety Risk Management: Uncertainty & Decisions
A lot of us have been doing aerodrome safety risk management for a while now. In that time, I’ve made a lot of mistakes and that means, hopefully, that I have learned a bit about risk management. So, I’d like to share some of my best lessons from being a regulator and practitioner of safety risk management over that time.
Image credit: Taryn Elliot via Pexels
Risk Evaluation Series
I have never really liked risk assessments that involve some vague calculation of consequence and likelihood. I have witnessed, and perhaps been involved in, many arguments about where to stick some potential or even past disaster into a limited matrix.
A couple of years ago, I had a whinge/thought experiment on an alternative method of risk evaluation. I enjoyed the use of the term Probability-Impact Graph, rather than Likelihood-Consequence Matrix, to create a little theme - see if you can guess what it was.
I’ve repackaged these posts and a follow-up post for renewed consumption below. Each image is actually a link to the post.
Bow-Tie Risk Assessment Series
A long time ago, I was deep into the bow-tie risk assessment methodology and over the years, I have never really left it. These posts were the basis of some great work I did a couple of years ago working with BHP Billiton which I will blog about in the near future.
Image Credit - (cc) Oleg Magni
Unnecessary Segregation or Pragmatic Isolation?
I've been out in the "real" world for the past six months or so and in that time, my thinking on risk management has changed a little bit. So here it comes, a confession... I have being using a PIG recently and I have felt its use has probably helped with effective management of overall risk.
BTII: Control-freak*
As a follow-on to my first post on the Bow-Tie risk assessment method, I thought I'd concentrate on controls (or barriers or whatever else you would like to call them). This is, after all, where all the action happens. Risk controls are how we spend most of our time - they are the practical aspect of managing risk.
BTI: Dressing up for Risk Assessments
I've been doing a lot of pondering on the Bow-Tie method of risk assessment for a project at work. Bow-Tie is a tool used by many, especially in the oil & gas industry, to create a picture of risk surrounding a central event. It's got a few positives and a few negatives but these can be overcome if you understand the limitations of the model being used.