Risk assessment

Restored on 6th September 2024. Looking in a shoebox of old software packages on CD I discovered this, meaning I’m now able to use my old Access applications again, including one I designed to facilitate an organization to assess its risks and apply for ISO 9001 certification, for which I was in theory a licensed assessor, which got me several contracts, notably at Eurotunnel.

There is more to being a business consultant than leaving a trail of half-full coffee cups across your client’s office, marking the desks you have visited in the course of your investigations. Your notes also have to be written up into a report revealing valuable insights which, convention has it, your client’s staff could not have achieved by themselves.

My task was to carry out a Risk Assessment. Richard Twallin, owner of Pondergrove Ltd, deemed me competent because I’d written a software package designed to process data for that very purpose. But I was a beginner at knowing how to use it in real life. Health and Safety, Political Correctness and Risk Assessment have this in common, that I never encountered them in my formative years. In those good old days we had to manage with common sense, tact and seat-of-the-pants.

In one of my coffee-leaving desk-meetings, I made a note of the term “VPN”; decided not to reveal ignorance by asking what it was. My informant assumed I was more knowledgeable than he, and I hated to disappoint him. It was only later, deciphering my notes at home, that I faced assessing the risk, if any, of using a VPN. It stands for Virtual Private Network, which I vaguely knew already—Public? Private?—probably one or the other. This didn’t quite explain what a VPN is, but had I asked, would I have understood the answer?*

After my nine-hours-without-a-break at the client’s head office (mentioned in this post), I was to do my write-up in the comfort of my own home, “at leisure”, so to speak. The task was to identify potential threats, quantify them and multiply by vulnerability and impact, arriving at a number representing the risk. Is that clear? It wasn’t to me.

I wrestled with my task to no avail. What does a man do if at first he doesn’t succeed? Walk away and find something easier, to heal his wounded pride. A beer? No good: my brain would get even more confused. I needed a displacement activity, something to yield a quick win and restore my self-respect.

*  Reviewing this post 7 years after retiring from Pondergrove Ltd, I see that Karleen’s computer downstairs and mine upstairs used to be connected by VPN. I could back up files on her machine She could print things like today’s crossword wirelessly from hers and print it on our shared printer upstairs. But when she bought a new computer, replacing her old one bought second-hand 14 years ago, we forgot the password, so now we communicate by Gmail which I suppose is a Virtual Public Network — VPN. So I still don’t understand

******

There’s a door in my house, unbalanced on its hinges. When you leave it ajar it likes to slam shut, rattling its glass unpleasantly. I’d often thought of fixing it but it seemed too tedious a task. Now suddenly it seemed like a good idea, something that ought to be done today! I’d have the satisfaction of a good job well done, to put me in the frame of mind to go back to my study and tackle the risk assessment.

Doors are heavy, but taking them off isn’t hard—you just unscrew the hinges. It’s not even hard to rebalance them. You just drill new holes for the screws. I admit it takes a little thought to establish where those new holes need to be, but I’ve done it before. The hard part is to put the door back on. It’s especially hard without an assistant. My impulse to do the job now defied all reason.

Once detached from the frame, the door had to be raised with wedges till its hinges were the right height and angle for inserting the first screws. I’d got it so near, just a little bit more needed, when I lost control and the door slipped through my fingers by its own weight, landing on the television, DVD player, satellite box and potted plant, all of which stood on a three-legged table. I saw the gravity of the situation as gravity had its way and everything got knocked over.

D amn  S hit   B last   F uck  !

My colourful language at such junctures is a kind of prayer to the Universe, helpful I like to think in minimising the effect of disasters I unleash upon myself. Would the glass door be smashed, the electronic items fail due to internal injuries, the pot plant die of shame and grief? It’s a miracle, but nothing worse happened than disarray and dirt on the carpet. I botch-fixed the door back on. It’s marginally better-balanced than it was to start with. To my gratitude (and this is a gratitude journal after all) everything still works.

Had I performed formal risk analysis on my alleged “displacement activity”, I would have established the following.

Threat of door falling over: it’s too heavy to balance with one hand, top score.
Vulnerability of household items to this threat: they’re right next to the door, top score.
Impact: they’ll all be smashed, including the door-glass, top score.
Multiply together for Risk and you get: “Are you crazy? Don’t do it alone”.

I walked away in despair from a Risk Assessment, only to receive an instant training exercise in that very topic.