One of the things that I have learned by being a construction professional and US Army officer, is that risk is a thing that needs to be managed. I learned early on, and have had it reinforced through practice, that all risks should be managed by the party, in any construction project/mission, that has the best tools and control of that risk in the effort. To that, I want to be clear, to manage risk is to not avoid risk or be averse to risk, because doing so only shifts the risk away from your control or awareness, and is almost always the riskier proposition.
What do I mean by this? Let’s start with my experience on the contractor/construction manager/executor side of things. One of the pesky things that happens in any construction project/military mission is the need to maintain physical safety protocols and conduct cleanup/housekeeping. Safety is a paramount focus on any construction or military training site. There are oodles of training sessions given and ongoing emphasis to make sure jobs are “safe”. The reality is that construction has numerous and varied ongoing risks to personal life and limb throughout the process. It’s just a risky business in that way. And it requires diligence and an “all hands on deck” approach to mitigating those risks from becoming a hazard that could hurt someone. So when it comes to making sure we have all of the safety measures in place, who holds responsibility is a matter of a “both everyone and no one” quandary. By that, I mean technically everyone from the worker to the employer to the owner has the responsibility to take ownership of job site safety, but that also means no one individual has ultimate responsibility for all, each and every, of the job site safety measures.
As a contractor/executor side of this, I’m probably the best person to manage safety focused risks on the job site. But how does it get done? In working for several organizations, I can tell you there’s a range of responses. On one extreme, one approach by the CM/GC was to assign this entirely to the trade contractors (primarily through the various trade contracts), without any real mechanism to ensure that there was consistency across how said trade contractors approached or executed their safety measures. This risk averse approach, took all liability away from the firm I worked for at the cost of creating varied and in some cases inherently more risky conditions. One such example was as it related to how labeling protocols resulted in floor hole coverings that had one person mistake it for a work platform before they were told it wasn’t safe location to work. Or another example was where a trade contractor would orally promise to use chain link fencing to barricade a part of the site, to only opt to later install orange plastic construction barrier (a significant downgrade), to which there was not any real recourse. This “hands off” because “we don’t own it” approach was problematic at best and (based on the random/perhaps not random OSHA inspection we went through) was lucky not to cause serious injury.
This was as opposed to another firm I worked for that literally had prescribed safety boards for each site, with mandated first aid and other PPE kits, a required safety manual (that subs had to sign off on), regular and educational safety inspections, and a “we want to control our sites” approach to job site safety. It was night and day. Yes, we took on, because of our direct involvement as the GC, liability as a result of having trade contractors comply to our standards. But, by doing so we actually reduced the risks on the job and resulted in no recorded injuries across numerous job sites over many years (reducing actual liability exposure, with a corresponding decreased premium rate). It was clear then, as much as it is clear now, taking the risk averse approach only heightens and actually creates more risk. I had similar experiences working on the owners side, where in one case “it’s all the contractor’s responsibility” risk averse approach was the mantra as opposed to “this is our installation, and we have to take case of everyone on it, even the workers of the contractors on site” approach. The latter was a clear example of an underlying philosophy that one should own/embrace the risk so you can manage it effectively.
And this applies beyond construction. It can be in financial matters, political decision making, and even operational approaches. Recently, I was discussing the need to update the computer purchase recommendations for our academic department for incoming students. Some years ago, prior to and upon my assumption of the role of Department Executive Officer (XO), it was abundantly clear that the general university computer recommendations were just not sufficient for upper division courses in our area, because the university base model was based on functionality at the least common denominator level for all programs (resulting in a lack of disk space, memory, etc. for various applications in engineering). The previous leadership took the risk averse approach, in that they didn’t want to be held responsible for recommending something different than the IT department had given as they’d have to answer if those recommendations were insufficient or more expensive (eg they’d get blamed not the department leadership). I, on the other hand, was much more concerned with the complaints that were regularly being voiced, and corresponded to, about how we should have told them they needed X or Y capacity and how they couldn’t use their laptop to do course work because they were seriously deficient (thus relying on campus computer labs, which became an acute problem during the COVID pandemic). The question was which risk are you dealing with? Being held to account for telling people what they need or being held to account for failing to do so?
My approach was not the risk averse one, it was the risk management one. I drafted a memo, laying out open ended but specific specs, making clear the pros and cons of what was needed and giving two levels. Knowing well that most families only buy a laptop only once for their loved one’s collegiate experience, they were written to enable the computer purchased upon arrival to, more likely than not, function all the way to the end of that experience and still keep up with software updates 4 to 5 years hence. You know how many complaints we received? Zero, none, nada, not even a one. There were some concerns raised once or twice about cost, but once they were aware of the intent (laid out up front of the recommendations as a clear rationale for them), in every case they were thankful. And more often than not, when parents, students, and others would ask about similar recommendations for other majors, the refrain was “I wish others did this too so we’d know what to buy that would last the duration”. Yes, there’s a risk in putting out something that went above and beyond what IT put out, but what was the down side? Appreciation and an exhibition of better performance for the students with an ending of the constant litany of complaints on why they didn’t know answer couldn’t function the way they wanted to? Was that really a problem? The bigger risk? Answer, no. They’re really weren’t any downsides at all, other than having to periodically update the recommendations. Managing the risk, in other words, was less risky than avoiding or being averse to it. WE have the responsibility to make OUR students be in the best position possible to succeed in OUR curricula in OUR department based on what WE know. We can and should manage this risk and not leave it up to others who know less, are less likely to receive the complaints, and are less equipped to resolve the problem ahead of it becoming a problem.
Risk management is about knowingly and carefully assuming risks while putting in place mechanisms and tools to mitigate the potential downsides of those risks should they occur (as well as building in capacity to deal with the unknowns). Life is risky, period. Everything we do has risks. Some are greater and others smaller. And, yes, there is absolutely such a thing as taking on too much risk. But here is the thing, avoiding risk, being risk averse, is actually doing just that, assuming too much risk. It’s an attempt to push out of the way that thing that you have a very important part of the pie in addressing. The mere fact you’ve chosen to avoid or be averse to it doesn’t make the risk go away. No you’ve made a deliberate choice (a bad one I’d surmise). It just means others (or no one) is going to manage it, and they may or may not do it well or be equipped to address it so as to not have the downsides actually occur. That is inherently the more risky proposition. While I fully get that it’s prudent to insulate yourself from financial and other legal liability, especially in a litigious environment like the United States, that doesn’t mean you avoid risk. There are tools for those things, like insurance, peer review, checks and balances, and so forth. But none of those are avoiding or being averse, they are part of a comprehensive risk management process that enables you to better address the risks. And they also help you avoid the trap of perceiving risks that aren’t really there (or if they are they were just ones you’ve been blind or adverse to recognizing and managing properly).
In conclusion, manage risk don’t be averse to it. And in that, risk, if you’re going to choose to avoid it and do a stiff arm against actively managing it, it either a) needs to not be a risk at all (and not an opportunity either, meaning it’s a waste of time), b) you have 100% confidence in whomever or whatever will be in place to manage it outside your control, OR c) you’re fully willing to accept the consequences when your aversion ends up biting you in the proverbial forth point of contact. Any of these should be a last resort to working to managing the risk appropriately and by the best parties to do so effectively.
