October 12

Jim’s home office was a disaster. It looked as though there had been an explosion in a supply closet full of Post-It.

Jim and Bobbie didn’t look much better themselves. They sat there, shell-shocked, staring at the mass of paper and notes, none of which made any sense anymore.

That Saturday morning had started out OK. Alex had taken the twins swimming and they planned to come over to Jim and Debbie’s later for the BBQ. That left Bobbie and Jim the morning to brainstorm the framework for the risk assessment.

“OK. We’re set,” Jim had announced when Bobbie arrived. “I’ve a pot of coffee ready, the ribs are in the smoker and I cleared Staples out of sticky notes and Sharpies. This should be a piece of cake.”

Bobbie smiled at Jim’s enthusiasm. She followed him into the kitchen to say hi to Debbie and grab a coffee before they headed into Jim’s study to get started.

Jim’s home office was a small, neat room where, if you looked around carefully, you could follow his life from a small farm in West Texas, to Vietnam, back to the Texas oilfields and then through to various oil and gas projects around the world. That is, you could normally see all of that except for the fact that by lunchtime, most of the space was covered in sheets from a flip chart which were themselves plastered with multi-colored Post-It notes.

The morning had started off easily enough. They had both researched various risk assessment methodologies and printed out standards and the plan was to take one and use that as the basis for the XYZ Co assessment. All they needed to do was to take what was in the standard and turn it into a template they could use. Unfortunately, they quickly discovered that this was easier said than done.  

Around mid-morning, Jim threw his papers down and took off his glasses.

“Well, Bobbie, I guess one pot of coffee was being ambitious. I’m going to go brew a fresh pot and check on the ribs.”

Bobbie leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes before heading in the same direction. She was frustrated that they seemed to be going around in circles. The guides and standards they had seemed to contain everything they needed but when you read them more closely, they would jump from some very high-level concept right into the weeds. The middle step of how to get from one to the other was missing. 

She poured herself a fresh cup of coffee and stood in the kitchen for a moment mulling things over. Jim was fussing around his smoker, checking his ribs and  reapplying his ‘secret’ rub mix. Bobbie smiled. Close as they had become, he still wouldn’t share his secret recipe. In fact, she wasn’t sure he even had a recipe. When she’d last watched him prepare BBQ, he seemed to just do everything from memory….

Suddenly, something clicked in her head and she burst out onto the back deck.

“I know where we’re getting hung up. This is like your cooking, Jim. Or when Debbie bakes.”

Jim closed the hood of his smoker and turned around slowly with a wary look on his face.

“Ummm, ok….”

She sighed.

“So you know how I keep pestering you for your rub recipe and you keep telling me it’s this big secret but I don’t think you actually have one. You’ve done this so many times that it’s mostly by instinct. It’s the same when I watch Debbie bake. She doesn’t even need to measure the ingredients she’s done it so often. You can describe the general process and maybe some of the specifics, but there’s a lot you just do without thinking.”

“I think I see where you’re headed,” Jim replied, “go on.”

“I think these guides we’re trying to use are the same. Some are like just giving someone a list of ingredients and expecting them to cook the thing. And others  jump around and miss bits out. They expect you to know what they’re talking about before you get started.”

“So you’re saying we need to mix and match to get a recipe of our own?”

“Pretty much,” Bobbie replied. “It’s not an exact analogy but I don’t think any of the guides we have will work by themselves. We need to take the appropriate bits from each and combine them into one framework. Then we adapt everything for XYZ Co.”

Jim wiped his hands and gave a shrug. 

“Well, after how things have gone so far, I’m willing to try anything. Let’s give it a shot.”

They grabbed the pot of fresh coffee and headed back into the study.

“OK, Bobbie, lead on,” Jim said. He had a fresh sheet of paper on the flip chart and a Sharpie at the ready. He wrote ‘risk assessment framework’ in the center of the sheet and drew a circle around it.

Bobbie flipped through the papers she’d gathered up.

“Right. So the first thing we need is a way to break things down into categories or groups. That’s going to help us divide the work and present the results.”

“OK,’ Jim said. He drew a line from the center, and wrote down ‘categories’ with a big circle around it. He drew another line from that bubble then stepped back slightly, tapping his teeth with the marker thoughtfully.

“So what do we use as categories? Threat types?” he asked.

Bobbie thought for a moment before she flipped back through her notes.

“No…” she said cautiously. “That’s going to make us threat-led but we want to be objectives focussed. Hmmm….” 

She thought for a moment.

“Got it! Let’s use the departments as categories. That’s going to make it easier to break down plus everyone’s been explaining the threats to their department’s objectives so I already have that information.”

Jim grinned and wrote ‘departments’ next to categories.

“Easy! What’s next?” he said. 

“OK, now we need a method to calculate the risk. What about,” she looked at a piece of paper, “likelihood times impact?”

Jim drew another line from the center, wrote ‘methodology’ in a bubble, then added ‘likelihood x impact’ next to it.

“So…,” he started, “this is a little dorky but…”

She cut him off with a laugh.

“Don’t worry, Jim, this whole thing is really, really dorky. I promise not to tell Debbie.”

He smiled and continued.

“Ok, so I don’t like that approach. I’ve never really liked how it makes you fold so much into the likelihood calculation. You have to consider the magnitude of the threat and the likelihood or frequency but then what about preventative measures?”

“For example, we know that there’s flooding here pretty much every year. So we know the likelihood is very high but we have preventative measures in place at the site. So the likelihood of XYZ getting flooded is lowered.”

“OK, I’m with you,” Bobbie replied. “But what’s the alternative? Some of these formulae are pretty horrific. I don’t want to get tied up in knots with something too complicated.“

“What about this? Jim said as he bent over the chart. He wrote ‘vulnerability’ under the formula and drew a small arrow putting it between likelihood and impact. He then crossed out ‘likelihood’ and wrote ‘threat’ above.

“Risk equals threat times vulnerability times impact.” Bobbie read out loud. She thought for a moment, running this through her head.

“Yes, I like that, Jim. It’s still nice and simple but gives us that additional factor to work with. Nice.”

“Great,” he smiled, “what’s next?”

“We need a way to grade and score the risks. I thought we would use the same grading, values and colors you designed for our safety reporting. Most folks are familiar with these already so we don’t have to explain that again.”

“Agreed,” Jim said as he drew a final bubble and wrote ‘metrics’ inside. Next to that he wrote ‘Jim’s amazing safety metrics system’ and stood back.

“What’s next?” he asked.

Bobbie looked down at her notes before looking back up.

“Uh, that’s it I think,” she replied with a big grin.

“That’s it?” Jim exclaimed. “We had all that fuss this morning and now we’ve solved this in …” he peered into his mug, “… one coffee’s worth of thinking! That’s not bad.”

There was a clattering from outside and they heard a hammering on the door followed by excited voices as Debbie let the twins in. 

“Good timing too,” Bobbie agreed. “I don’t think we would be getting much done now.”

“Well,” Jim said as he turned to the door. “Time for consultant Jim to call it a day. Grandpa Jim’s on duty now. I’ll, uh, leave you to clean up your mess.” He gave her a wink as he jumped into the hall and grabbed the twins. They screamed with excitement as he picked them up and carried them into the kitchen for snacks.

Bobbie could hear them babbling away about their morning as she gathered up the papers when she heard a low whistle from the door.

“Wow,” Alex said as he came in.”I thought you safety folk would be tidier.”

She laughed and gave him a hug.

“Ain’t no party like an HSE party, baby. Let’s leave this. I can clean it up later. Let’s join the others and you can tell me what you guys have been up to while we were having our sticky note party.”