Critical Risk Management: Protecting Your People and Business : Psg

Critical Risk Management

Critical Risk Management (CRM) involves knowing which activities in your business have the greatest potential to harm your people and whether the right controls are in place to protect them. It is also known as Critical Control Management, Fatality Risk Management (FRM) or Fatality Prevention.

The ICMM provides excellent guidance in their Health and Safety Critical Control Management: Good Practice Guide and Critical Control Management: Implementation Guide. These outline a nine-step process for critical control management that should include planning, implementation, performance evaluation and remedy, with a number of feedback loops integrated to improve robustness.

What is a Critical Risk?

An event that can cause significant disruption to a business operation or result in worker fatality or permanent disability. These are controlled with Critical Controls.

What is a Critical Control?

A control that is crucial to preventing the event or mitigating the consequences of the event. The absence or failure of a critical control would significantly increase the risk despite the existence of the other controls. In addition, a control that prevents more than one unwanted event or mitigates more than one consequence is normally classified as critical.

Why manage Critical Risks?

To protect those exposed to risks
Demonstrate the organisation cares about its workers
To ensure the success and growth of the organization

The Process

What needs to be done following development & implementation of the CRMP?

Create a positive Critical Risk Management Culture:

Ensure the focus is on providing workers with the Critical Controls to keep them protected from the Critical Risks (The focus is on keeping workers alive and safe, not meeting KPIs!)
Ownership of the CRMP (Give it the required time and attention)
Insatiable curiosity, stay curious about the work being conducted within the organisation (Ensure the CRMP is updated when new critical risks present themselves)

Final Thoughts regarding Critical Risk Management:

It shouldn’t make day to day work harder
Engaging people is key, those involved with the work are the experts on how work is conducted
Implementation of a CRMP is only the beginning! It is a forever evolving plan/process
It will take time! (Rome wasn’t built in a day and this is applicable to a CRMP! It took PSG 3-4 months to build a CRMP for a WA based company in 2024)

Critical Risk Management