GUE’S RISK MANAGEMENT MANUAL A

Work In Progress

The GUE EDGE predive procedure manages risks for simpler dives, ensuring team safety and mission efficiency.

Manual

Each GUE diver is intimately familiar with GUE EDGE. We dutifully work through each letter in the acronym before each dive, reciting in detail everything from the contents of our pockets to the hierarchy of our team and the plan in our heads. See Dimitris Fifis’s article, “The GUE Predive Sequence,” InDepth (July 2, 2020).

GUE’s predive sequence is, at its core, a risk management exercise. Through it, our teams identify and inventory risk and then ascribe strategies and solutions that manage that risk to a tenable minimum. For example, the sequence identifies the risk of omitted equipment and forces the divers to check the most commonly missed parts of setup: hoses connected, inflators snug, straps fastened, and pockets full.

For most dives, thinking about GUE EDGE from an academic risk perspective is unnecessary and overly complex. But, as we venture farther, deeper, and longer into the water, a robust (both practical and academic) understanding of risk management becomes necessary. That is, dynamic GUE explorers must understand how to adapt our risk management framework to novel missions in an effort to reduce error and ensure success.

There is much talk throughout GUE of both our burgeoning Project Diver curriculum as well as the forthcoming Level 3 programs. To be certain, diving that occupies the frontier of GUE’s endeavors must embrace the most robust risk management planning—that which takes GUE EDGE to an extreme that correlates with the environments, logistics, and other risks involved.

Devastating consequences

Risk management failures can lead to preventable loss, including extreme outcomes such as injury or death. But, even in a less sensational context, planning failures can have devastating impacts on projects and Level 3 dives. For example, poor risk assessment can lead to a miscalculation of the impact of certain risks on the project and, therefore, a miscalculation of the project’s needs for extra time and/or resources to address the risk if it occurs. Consider the project that miscalculates the impact of a storm on diving visibility and thereby loses six days of diving instead of three. The impact of this miscalculation may be amplified if the team has not allowed for the possibility of weather-related interruptions. This error may even impact the amount of fresh water, food, batteries, fuel, and other consumables the team requires each day. While no one may be harmed by this planning failure, the project may very well fail. This failure may be mostly inconvenient, but it may also compromise developing relationships with other entities that have relied upon the commitment of project leaders.

Positive results

Proper planning can also support project success by eliminating (or minimizing) deviations from the project plan and avoiding negative surprises along the way. It can help to generate buy-in on the part of all project participants and stakeholders, and it can serve as a powerful team-building tool at the early stages of project development.

Effective risk management involves identifying potential hazards and taking action to prevent them from setting off a chain reaction.

To these ends, GUE’s forthcoming Risk Management Manual provides a robust framework GUE divers can use in managing risk. The manual is principally designed for projects and Level 3 endeavors in that it embraces the broader array of risks this kind of diving may encounter. However, it will be a helpful tool for any GUE diver in understanding and managing the risks they face—even on routine recreational-level dives.

The manual’s framework focuses on helping GUE divers develop creative strategies to minimize risks and plan for appropriate responses to situations that may arise. This framework should enable any GUE diver—but particularly GUE’s Project Divers and Level 3 divers—to inventory, assess, and manage the risks they face. In doing so, project managers should be able to increase the certainty of their project’s success, both in the metrics they have crafted for project outcomes and in the reduction of any potential harm to stakeholders and the environment.

Deliverables

The manual prescribes two key deliverables for any project: The Risk Management Plan (“RMP”) and Crisis Response Plan (“CRP”). These deliverables are critical to the divers’ success and the safety of all participants. The manual discusses them at length, including the rationale behind them and the process of developing them. The key components to the framework should be familiar to anyone with a background in risk management practices.

Divers first engage in a comprehensive stakeholder analysis, which attempts to incorporate the viewpoints of the project’s key participants, interested parties, benefactors, beneficiaries, and any other party involved. A comprehensive stakeholder analysis (at least, one conducted for the purposes of risk management) lists the risk factors that each stakeholder (or stakeholder group) creates or prioritizes. It captures the goals and potential pitfalls associated with all groups interested in the endeavor. While seemingly mundane, stakeholder analysis can be critical to project success.

The local cave diving community had explored the cave system at length some time ago, but no one had produced a proper survey. So, we set out to do so. While we tried to be clear with our objectives, the locals were initially somewhat hostile to our project because they thought we intended to take credit for their hard work. So, we took several steps to emphasize that our survey project rested on their exploration—for example, we listed them on the masthead of the survey as contributors. We could not have completed the survey project without their help, so these minor gestures were ultimately essential to our success.

– John Kendall, Sardinia Project

The team then conducts a comprehensive risk inventory based on the stakeholder analysis findings. This goes well beyond goals, unified team, equipment, and the other components of GUE EDGE. For example, a project manager may need to weigh the risks associated with surface transportation for the team. The project may require strict safety standards (e.g., wearing seatbelts and abiding by speed limits) for all participants. As such, project management should avoid at all costs any form of transportation that it deems unsafe (e.g., rental scooters or mopeds, utility vehicles without roll bars, riding in the back of a pickup truck).

I remember thinking we might lose the entire team during our Britannic ‘99 Project—not from diving risks—but because bad-weather days found a team of overly energetic divers racing around the island on mopeds with sharp turns and steep drops.

– Jarrod

Jablonski, Britannic, 1999.

Examples like this add character and context to the manual; they help the team understand the importance of preparing a comprehensive inventory.

The team then evaluates its risk inventory with an eye toward probability, impact, and severity.

For example, while a shark attack is certainly a risk to certain projects (that is, while highly unlikely, the occurrence is technically uncertain), and a shark attack can cause extreme harm to project participants, sharks likely do not warrant as much analysis as weather and other environmental risks because of the low probability of an attack. However, if the project is focused on immersive ichthyology, where divers will regularly find themselves face-toface with sharks, then perhaps shark attack is one of the more critical risks to assess for that project.

Ultimately, the risk management process entails the elimination of untenable risks, the acceptance of risks that fail to rise to a certain probability and/or severity, and the minimization of risks’ probability and/or severity.

Matrix

To that end, the team must then draft the risk management plan, which applies a series of strategies to manage each risk. This is most readily presented in a matrix format, but divers should feel free to express their plan in the

Brad Beskin has been diving actively for approximately twenty-eight years. He first became involved with GUE by taking Fundamentals in 2002, and then Cave 1 with Tamara Kendal in 2003. He is now a proud GUE DPV Cave diver and is looking forward to undertaking the GUE technical curriculum in 2023. When he is not diving, he earn his living as a civil litigator in Austin, Texas, and he also finds time to act as Director of Quality Control and the Chair of the Quality Control Board for Global Underwater Explorers. format that most readily meets their needs. Importantly, the entire team must be engaged in the RMP and understand it before the endeavor begins.

Finally, the team must look at the most probable, impactful, and/or severe risks, and develop the crisis response plan (CRP) to guide the team should such risks materialize.

Importantly, this framework is designed to operate in coordination with key GUE materials.

• It is not a discussion of decision-making, team dynamics, or error analysis, as this is covered in depth by related aspects of the Project Diver curriculum.

• It is not an in-depth guide to project management, which is covered at great length by other project diver course components, the GUE Documentation Diver course materials, and other GUE training materials.

• It is not a deep dive into risks specific to diving physics and physiology, which are covered in all GUE courses.

The Risk Management Manual will complement these key texts and enhance divers’ overall capacity. Just as the GUE Fundamentals diver assesses and manages risks on every dive, so too must the GUE Level 3 diver and/or project manager assess and manage risks—both for themselves and for their team. While each diver remains the master of their own risk tolerance, team leadership must provide a comprehensive means by which each team member can evaluate those risks for themselves.

The manual contains additional resources to guide divers in the creation of a comprehensive set of plans. These include a legal liability primer, a detailed discussion of insurance resources, example policies and procedures, a primer on financial risk management (including management of tax exemption), and a series of case studies from familiar GUE projects.

Some assembly required

The manual’s formulaic approach must be adapted to any project or Level 3 dive by apply- ing the team’s own experience, knowledge, and research. To be certain, the framework requires those customized inputs to do any heavy lifting on the divers’ behalf. Project management and team leadership must integrate the process into their endeavors seamlessly—both its planning and execution—so that it permeates all aspects. From surface support and logistics to the lead exploration diver, all must understand the risk management and crisis response plans.

There are no viable shortcuts in risk management that lead to desirable outcomes. To that end, the manual’s framework is not a checklist. Yes, GUE divers love their checklists, but this framework works best in concert with a diver’s own critical analysis and customized, creative solutions. Each dive carries its own unique set of risk factors, and a thorough assessment must be conducted for each individual endeavor. Failing to do so may be detrimental to the dive’s outcomes and its participants.

Finally, this framework is not a comprehensive manual for managing risk or responding to a crisis. While the manual attempts to provide colorful examples, there are countless scenarios a project may encounter that are not specifically addressed. The manual is not intended to be— nor could it possibly be—a comprehensive index of all possible risks a team must consider.

Disclaimer: As has been stated before and will be repeated throughout the manual, nothing contained herein or in GUE’s forthcoming Risk Management Manual is intended to constitute or should be construed as legal advice or advice in the procurement of insurance.