Feature
PRACTICE
Chasing the ideal Organisations have been using the International Safety Rating System in one form or another for 40 years to improve their operational risk management. There have been important lessons along the way BY MARK BOULT AND MARK FISHER
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n 1978 Frank Bird and George Germain published the first edition of the International Safety Rating System (ISRS®). It was the output of collaboration with organisations and individuals across a range of industries to determine the “ideal” safety management system. The ambition was for organisations to use ISRS to assess their performance against this ideal so as to identify improvement opportunities and track their performance in an objective repeatable manner. Over 40 years on, DNV GL published the ninth edition of ISRS (now called the International Sustainability Rating System) in 2019. This edition continues a tradition of keeping ISRS current by reflecting the best practices you would expect to see in an “ideal” management system today and has expanded to cover a range of operational risks: occupational health, occupational safety, environment, quality, security, sustainability, process safety, energy, asset integrity and knowledge. It aligns with the 2018 ISO 31000 and COSO’s 2017 “Enterprise Risk Management – integrated framework”. Following the ISO 31000 process, these practices run from context and risk identification through to risk treatment with monitoring and review providing feedback for improvement, and with consultation and communication,
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The ambition was for organisations to use ISRS to assess their performance against this ideal so as to identify improvement opportunities
Enterprise Risk
