Why We Need to Shift Resources to Proactive Risk Management

As safety professionals, we often find ourselves reflecting on the way organizations allocate resources for risk management. Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague about why there is such reluctance to devote the necessary resources to the Critical Risk Management (CRM) process. It’s a thought-provoking issue, especially when considering the discrepancy between reactive and proactive risk management efforts.

Let’s take a step back and think about the last significant incident or high-potential event you were involved in. When an incident happens, regardless of its size, the process of investigation usually kicks in—often involving tools like ICAM (Incident Cause Analysis Method) or similar methodologies. This process is resource-intensive: multiple people, rooms, hours of time, several meetings, numerous stages of review and approval. When you tally up the resources involved, you might find, for example, that seven people spent seven days collectively investigating the incident.

Now, let’s flip this. Imagine approaching an operations team and saying, “We need seven people for seven days to conduct a bowtie analysis of critical risks.” The response would likely be met with resistance— “No chance, can’t fit it in, it’s not a priority.” And yet, when an incident occurs, we’re suddenly forced to devote significant resources to investigating and responding to it. This reactive approach is vastly different from the proactive identification and analysis of critical risks, yet the resource demands are often just as high.

It’s curious, isn’t it? We’re willing to throw resources at an event after it happens, but when it comes to preventing it from happening in the first place—by allocating time and effort to identifying critical risks upfront—the response is often a hard “no.”

What if we could flip the script? Imagine if we devoted even a portion of the resources we spend reacting to incidents and instead applied them upstream—before incidents occur. The upfront cost of conducting a thorough analysis like a bowtie might seem high, but the long-term savings in time, effort, and, most importantly, in avoiding incidents would be substantial.

In essence, we could save ourselves significant amounts of resources by investing in proactive risk management. It’s an interesting thought and one that raises many questions about the way we view and allocate our resources in safety management.

I’m curious to hear from others in the industry. Have you encountered the same resistance when trying to apply resources to the proactive identification of critical risks? How have you navigated this challenge? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this topic.