Risk management and your job

BY CHUCK MORRIS

Standard of Care

The watchfulness, attention, caution, and prudence that a reasonable person in the circumstances would exercise. If a person’s actions do not meet this standard of care, then his/her acts fail to meet the duty of care which all people (supposedly) have toward others. Failure to meet the standard is negligence, and any damages resulting therefrom may be claimed in a lawsuit by the injured party.

The problem is that the “standard” is often a subjective issue upon which reasonable people can differ.

Facilities operations and maintenance encompasses a broad spectrum of services, competencies, processes, and tools required to assure the built environment will perform the functions for which a facility was designed and constructed. (WIKI)

Duty of Care

The responsibility of a person or organization to take all reasonable measures necessary to prevent activities that could result in harm to other individuals and/or their property.

A duty of care is the responsibility that a person or business has when doing business with, or otherwise interacting with, other people and businesses. Under tort law, duty of care is defined as the responsibility of a person or business to act as a reasonable person would act in a similar situation. A person who violates his duty of care by acting in a negligent or reckless matter

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is then liable for any harm that another person suffers as a result of his behaviour. (WIKI)

Part of our job is to recognize and minimize or do away with risk whenever possible. Is it possible? In some instances, yes, it is. However, there will be a lot out of your control and that does require due diligence if you want to try to reduce the risk and any resulting legal actions that may be brought against the district.

When you walk into a school and you are glancing at what is before you, do you note broken wooden trim at child height, ceiling tiles not replaced, or any myriad of other things out of place? You should, and work orders issued to effect repairs. As soon as you know of something that is wrong, dangerous, or against the Fire Code etc., you own the risk and resulting actions if any are taken by others against the school district.

Ensure memos are kept and work orders are filled out correctly, not just what the staff member did to effect repairs but also the identification of the work letting the worker know the importance and that it is a danger to staff and students or an infraction of any of the CODEs and WorkSafeBC rules. If you have not done your due diligence and your staff did not fill out the work order with all the information required sitting in discovery can get uncomfortable. When sitting as a witness, you will

find it even more difficult to identify the shortcoming of your operation because you missed directing staff to repair or correct the problem.

Risk Management Branch (RMB) stated at their 2018 Risk Management Conference in the Lower Mainland that we had best be aware of the Standard of Care and the Duty of Care. If you lack staff resources, how do you overcome that impediment? The work does not go away. How much risk is your district comfortable with?

Part of your job is to identify the risk and advise your Secretary Treasurer or Risk Manager if you have one. Some identified risk you will experience is tied to human activity. What about a disheveled shop space that is harmful to the students? Warn the shop teacher and ensure the school admin team are aware. You can shut the shop down. Holes in your playing fields create a hazard to anyone using the field. Students and other, including some animals, will dig holes. If not found and repaired, people could twist an ankle or break a leg.

How do you know what you don’t know? How do you know you are looking at the right risk or challenges? Use Strategic foresight as part of your risk assessment.

Strategic foresight is a practice rooted in future studies designed to help better understand, prepare for, and influence the future. Strategic foresight recognizes the future is not predetermined or predictable. Instead, the roots of multiple plausible futures exist today in the form of weak or early signals of potential change. Identifying and monitoring these signals can reduce the likelihood of being unprepared for or surprised by emerging trends and changes as they arrive in the mainstream. It can also uncover points at which today’s decisions and actions can be leveraged to move toward desirable futures.

Strategic foresight is a complement to, and not a substitute for, strategic planning. Traditional strategic planning reviews evidence from the past and asks how we might do things better, faster, or more proficiently in the future. Conversely, strategic foresight looks ahead and asks what may be coming, how it might affect us, and what we can do today to start moving toward a preferred outcome. – Niosh Science Blog (CDC)

I daresay all of us have work to do. Where will you start? n

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