EA Books

Engineers Australia’s Engineering, Science and Technology Professional Standards Society.
2005, ISBN: 0858258293, 33 pages, $33

The Risk Management Strategies Guide is an Engineering Australia document, developed by a team with representation from Engineers Australia and the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia. The guide draws on the experience of this team.

The objective of the guide, explicitly stated in the Foreword, is to document ‘the risk management process and possible strategies to consider when preparing a risk management plan’ and what documentation is needed to do this according to requirements of the Engineering, Science and Technology Professional Standards Society.

The guide gives a good idea of the risk management process as applied to developing a risk management plan for an organisation or business, although somewhat skimpy on risk analysis/assessment (Royal Academy of Engineering reports do a better job in this area). The body of the guide looks briefly at planning, risk analysis, policies and procedures, risk treatment, documentation, and monitoring and audit. The appendices, the longest part of the guide, provide extensive guidance on identifying and quantifying organisational risk (Appendix 1) and on providing risk management documentation (Appendix 2). For example, in relation to organisational risk, consideration is given to clients, the brief, competency, analysis of exposure, commerciality, service delivery, communication protocols, document and record management and business management. The team has done a thorough job on the appendices.

The guide has no bibliography which is a significant drawback for the newcomer to this field (some guidance is needed in a field with many books) and the team could have listed the references used in its deliberations. Thus it is difficult to assess how much is based on experience or on published research. Despite these deficiencies, the guide meets its general objective of documenting the risk management process.

This guide is directed at engineers providing services to the public/clients. This guide would appeal also to senior managers focussed on strategic considerations in business and government, rather than risk practitioners at the ‘coal face’. As someone who undertakes risk assessment (and management) in relation to weapon systems in a defence setting, the guide has low relevance for me.

Additional reading:

The Royal Academy of Engineering has provided a series of three reports on managing engineering risk: The Societal Aspects of Risk, Common Methodologies for Risk Assessment & Management and Risks Posed by Humans in the control Loop.

Reviewed by Matti Keentok PhD (Eng), MIEAust