Organisations spend a great deal of time and effort ensuring that potential points of failure are identified and steps are put in place to minimise risk. But does this always take adequate account of the people factor? The people factor Despite rigorous systems and processes, many major incidents have been caused by human error, or…

I’ve written about black swan events before: situations that are so unexpected that you would never have thought they could happen. Until they did! Unexpected combinations of factors, such as natural disasters compounded by multiple other factors can cause havoc, as can events such as the central London fire that raged underground for 3 days,…

After the attack in October last year and the events this year in Paris, Sydney, Kenya and Copenhagen, Parliament Hill in Ottawa is undertaking a scenario planning exercise to consider their response to a whole range of possibilities, going from the “lone wolf” attack to a well-planned assault such as the one against Charlie Hebdo.…

I recently came across an interesting infographic, developed as a result of research into the gap between CEOs and information managers. The study led by Iron Mountain was carried out in January/February 2015 and covered 900 UK organisations. Here are some headline statistics: 89% of UK business leaders don’t fully understand what their information managers…

We support a number of clients operating in remote locations, including an oil production company in Kazakhstan. Such situations pose different challenges for premises risk and operational risk teams. Full environmental support These facilities have frequently been built for a specific purpose, such as oil production, and they are commonly far from any other cities…

The introduction of new systems within an organisation invariably causes changes across a large number of areas, particularly to processes, procedures, documentation and working practices. There might also be changes to job roles and team structures.

When hearing about the sudden changes to security measures in airports around the world this summer, it occurred to me that organisations such as the Civil Aviation Authority must have some quite awesome processes in place to allow them to change security procedures almost instantly. In addition to their ability to change their procedures so…

I have written before about the benefits of using dependency modelling as a tool for project management and I think the case is particularly strong for large-scale office refurbishments. Many such projects are done floor by floor, with staff relocated as the refurbishment proceeds.

When hearing about the sudden changes to security measures in airports around the world this summer, it occurred to me that organisations such as the Civil Aviation Authority must have some quite awesome processes in place to allow them to change security procedures almost instantly.

Scenario planning – finding the answers to those “what if” questions – is widely used in corporate strategy planning and has many benefits in operational risk management, not least of which is that it is far easier to plan and prepare in advance than to respond effectively whilst in the middle of a crisis, when the heat is on.

Connectivity has become an intrinsic part of our lives, both at home and at work. There is even a recently launched iPhone app that allows users to message each other via Bluetooth in places where there is no wifi or cellular network.

As we have carried out more audits than we can count, we thought you might find useful some tips and hints on how to survive an audit, whatever that audit might be for – for example critical facilities, quality standards, statutory compliance, data centre performance or Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM). So here are our ten…

As we have carried out more audits than we can count, we thought you might find useful some tips and hints on how to survive an audit, whatever that audit might be for – for example critical facilities, quality standards, statutory compliance, data centre performance or Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM).

As anyone who works in a facilities management (FM) role knows, FM covers an enormous and diverse range of services to the business. Key to efficient and effective management of these are knowing which equipment and processes are critical, the associated operational risk factors and the interdependencies between different areas.

Preventing systems and infrastructure failure must be very high on the priority list for all those managing facilities, critical engineering, IT, compliance and operational risk.

The consequences of severe weather will have both short term and long term impact across the Country and can often be fatal as we have seen over recent years with tsunamis and hurricanes around the world. In an earlier article I wrote of the impact on data centres of Hurricane Sandy, with lessons to be learned about where to locate critical systems.

We have a number of clients who take live feeds from their Building Management System (BMS) into Riskenomics. There may several reasons why the business chooses to do this, and I thought I would share with you some of those reasons and the advantages live feeds can bring.

While for some, Christmas might be a time to get the toolbox out and start on those DIY projects, Christmas is a time for a freeze on IT development work for many businesses.

The Lord Justice Jackson Reforms of civil litigation costs, especially relating to personal injury claims, are now in place. There have also been changes to the MoJ (Ministry of Justice) claims portal, for damages between £1,000 and £25,000, which impact on how employers’ and public liability claims are handled.

Data centres mean different things to different people. For the IT manager, it will be a space to host servers, routers, network firewalls etc. but for the facilities manager, the focus will be on space, security, utilities, power and cooling.

Most, if not all, projects carry risk. Whilst there will be many different aspects of risk throughout the project, it is when it interacts and integrates with the live business environment that most care is needed. Risk registers play an important part in identifying and managing risk, both for projects and other areas such as…

Most, if not all, projects carry risk. Whilst there will be many different aspects of risk throughout the project, it is when it interacts and integrates with the live business environment that most care is needed.

I am increasingly seeing outcome-based contracts become the norm for clients and service providers in areas such as facilities management, critical engineering and ITC.

Cisco has released the findings of its 2013 survey which was designed to understand the role of IT as a business enabler.

In my role as director and consultant with BSCM Operational Risk, clients and service providers talk to me about issues they have faced which might have been avoided if the contract mobilisation had been more robust. Based on their and my experience, I consider these to be the five golden rules to getting it right.

At Datacenter Dynamics last November the phrase on everyone’s lips was DCIM, or to give it its full title, Data Center Infrastructure Management.

Statutory and regulatory compliance isn’t optional – there may be a clue in the name! So I do find it surprising how passive many of the compliance management systems often are, in many cases managed using just spreadsheets – and while spreadsheets can do some pretty clever things, they’re not really designed for dependency modelling.

Two recent news stories caught my eye – both about banking and, in different ways, about compliance. First was the hacking of Associated Press’s Twitter account and the resulting tweet about an attack on the White House which injured Barack Obama.

Release 5 is really all about enhancing the performance and scalability of Riskenomics and ensuring we stay up-to-date with the latest browser technology and allowing greater intersystem connectivity between Riskenomics and other software applications to enhance your user experience.

Bucking the growing trend over recent years towards allowing home working, Yahoo! has just told all remote workers to relocate to their nearest office – or leave the business.

Journalists must be having a field day as the horse meat scandal continues to evolve as new failings continue to be revealed as the problem becomes increasingly widespread. With increasingly complex and globalised supply chains, what can the brand owner do to protect their reputation?

BSRIA has recently released its latest M&E maintenance KPIs. This annual survey asks building owners and occupiers for their ratings of service providers against ten mechanical and electrical maintenance KPIs.

Statutory compliance can be a strange beast sometimes. For example, the testing and inspection of an electrical installation is not a statutory requirement, yet The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 IS a UK statutory Instrument with which all employers and employees must comply.

DCD this year was a very interesting event which is becoming the prime place to attend and to be seen at, which is reflected in the ever increasing list of sponsors of this event which has outgrown its previous venue and now resides at Excel Centre.

At its core dependency modelling is such a simple concept – if this event happens, what impact does it have on other events?

If there is one thing Sandy demonstrated it is that you cannot make your DR plans too robust. There are always unplanned for eventualities when you approach your planning from the perspective of events that could occur. In my opinion, a more comprehensive approach is to look at what you need to continue to operate…

It is so true that, when you are dealing with vast amounts of data, finding the really essential items that impact on the business can be very akin to the proverbial needle in a haystack.

According to info4fire.com, the Passive Fire Protection Federation (PFPF) believes there is insufficient awareness of the need to pass on vital fire safety information on completion of a building.

Is your business dependent on one or more single points of failure? Your business is probably dependent on the continued operation of one or more critical services, for example basic utility type services i.e. power, water, IT, communications. And it also often dependent on services which are inherent to the nature and geographic location of…

There are no standards that define the term Cloud Computing and there are a number of interpretations on the idea which only serves to fuel the debate as to what does the term Cloud Computing really mean.