Approach to Risk Management

Throughout his career, Dr William Roberds has developed and implemented proven methods that help teams of decision makers, technical experts, and stakeholders do various combinations of the following:

• Optimize systems by quantitatively comparing options based on clearly defined decision criteria.
• Assess outcomes to apply those criteria, predict future performance, and plan realistic budgets, milestones, and contingencies.

Our structured process includes:

1. Work with decision makers/stakeholders to define the system, establish decision criteria, and identify performance measures for evaluation.
2. Work with technical experts to build models to estimate how the system will perform under various conditions.
3. Analyze uncertainties in input factors and how they affect performance.
4. Compare options using the decision criteria to identify and improve the best-performing solution.

We do this for virtually any “system”, including its various life-cycle phases, going from system “development” to “operations” to “closure” to “post-closure”.

• Development & Closure: Specific focus on assessing project cost and schedule. Examples:
  • transportation systems (highways, railroad, transit, airport, ports, including associated bridges, tunnels, etc.) – 100s of projects collectively worth >$100 billion (e.g., for US FTA / NY MTA, US FHWA / WSDOT / CalTrans, etc.)
  • pipelines – 10s (e.g., Metro Vancouver, Puget Sound Energy, KingCoMetro)
  • mine systems – 10s (e.g., for Penasquito Mexico, CBMM Brazil, Newmont, Freeport Indonesia)
  • dams – several (e.g., hydro expansion for BC Hydro and Seattle City Light)
  • facilities – 10s (e.g., NY Ground Zero, LA Olympics Coliseum, LA Community Colleges)
  • environmental cleanups – 10s (e.g., railroad groundwater contamination cleanup litigation, portfolio of superfund sites)
• Operations & Post-Closure: Specific focus on assessing safety, environmental and social impacts, cost, and system functionality. Examples:
  • pipelines – several (e.g., Tallgrass, TransMountain, DTE, Puget Sound Energy)
  • water dams/levees – 10s of water dams (e.g., for Nanaimo BC, Fraser Basin Council BC, Alberta Agriculture&Irrigation, Maricopa County AZ, Freeport Mining)
  • mine tailings dams/waste dumps – 10s of tailings dams/waste dumps (e.g., for Barrick Mining, Teck Mining Alaska, Antafagasta Mining Chile, CBMM Brazil, Ok Tedi PNG)
  • other disposal systems – 10s of landfills and nuclear waste (LLW, MLW, HLW) repositories (e.g., for US NRC, US DOE, AECL Canada, etc.)
  • infrastructure – 10s (e.g., tsunami hazard assessments for South African nuclear power plant and Canadian First Nations fishing village, landslide hazards for highways and railroads)

Please contact us for related papers or presentations.