Before you can make a judgement about the probability of a risk event, or the impact it could have, you need to understand the features of the risk event – how it could arise, what the consequence(s) could be, what the options might be for keeping the risk exposure within your tolerable loss range, and so on.
And undertaking risk management processes is futile unless your attempts to measure the impact and probability aspects are based on some sort of reasoning. Of course, the more reliable the reasoning, the better your measurements.
This Template Risk Schedule (editable Word document) was adapted from the indicative examples 10.1 and 10.2 in HB 436 Risk Management Guidelines, Companion to AS/NZS 4360:2004. It is provided to help you focus on:
- Defining the specific risk exposure, being the way that an event of this type would affect your business’ capacity to achieve its goals. This is far more specific than a hazard (which is often more loosely defined and may give rise to various separate exposures).
- Measuring the risk exposure.
- Considering your options in light of the information now available.
- If you decide to take action which affects your strategic or tactical planning, operating procedures or insurances, for example, you should make relevant notes on this document because that information will be relevant to the future monitoring and reassessment of the risk exposure.
This template is in Microsoft Word format (.docx, 16KB):
Please let us know about your experiences of using Risk Schedules, and if you have any questions or suggestions for improvement to the template, please leave a comment below.
best regards,
Dr Kerri O’Donnell
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