Objectively Assessing Risk in a Complex World

When engineers think of risk management, it’s often in the context of events directly related to specific program elements—adequately addressing all design criteria, identifying and securing commitments for the necessary program resources, or executing the program plan within budget and schedule constraints. While risks specific to the engineering effort must be addressed and managed to support a successful program outcome, our increasingly complex and interdependent operating environments do not allow the luxury of assuming events beyond the scope of the program plan are either unlikely to happen, or if they do, will result in only minimal inconvenience. As recent catastrophic events associated with large public projects have shown—ceiling panel collapses in the Boston Big Dig tunnel, levee breaches in New Orleans—events beyond the direct control of the designer and contractor can greatly affect not only the successful implementation of the overall infrastructure program, but adversely impact professional reputations and raise questions of institutional bias and complacency. Such externally generated risks may be realized due to errors by an intermediate supplier, perhaps a subcontractor’s subcontractor, or lack of action or oversight by a customer or governmental representative, indirect risks that are easily overlooked when planning and executing in a complex, multifaceted environment.