- Risk is essentially anything that could go wrong

and in the corporate space,

we do risk planning to really make sure

that we stay out in front of

any possible barrier to the successful delivery

of the project,

so it could be having resources

that aren't made available when we need them

to do certain activities,

it could be a contractor who doesn't

deliver a piece of the project on time,

and, you know, the key to our risk planning

is making sure that, as a project manager,

you're asking those questions and

looking for those things so that you are

identifying them early and

have the time to do the planning around

mitigation plans that could either

head off the risk before it comes to fruition

or, if it does happen, that you have

a contingency plan that you can implement

to keep the project moving forward.

- That's certainly, risks are a significant situation

we all look at, which you know,

we're talking a little bit about threats

and you have those, you have the threat

which is a negative probability,

you know, something negative happening,

but also the opportunities

which are not often sometimes,

but if you can find one, you need to export it of course.

My experience dealing in defense contracting,

in that industry, we had great risk

because our product, the products that

I was responsible for, must meet certain little specs,

and they were very tight tolerances,

and extremely significant layers of testing.

I mean, you know, multiple hours,

various chambers, various atmospheres

that they had experienced.

So great risk involved in some of the sub-components

that you would get from a sub-tier supplier,

that they have to meet those specs,

and if they did not meet the proper specs,

then I had a risk because I get false readings

on tests, etc.

Also one of the biggest challenges that I've faced,

I had five sole source sub-tier suppliers

because of the proprietary ownership of that component,

and each of the shortest lead time I had

on any of those suppliers was 20 weeks.

So you see the risk there to schedule.

If they're behind, if for anything,

so I had to develop a major risk register,

which I tracked, and also you would

basically have categorized all your risks,

which are the greatest catastrophic type of situation

you can develop risk responses to that.

And you have others which were lower risk,

you put like on a watch list.

You know, if this happens, it may delay a week.

But if this happens, it could shut the program down.

So you gotta be aware of all those,

and you have to manage those risks.

And the last thing I'd say is risk management is iterative.

You know, it's a cycle that never stops,

cause there'll be risks once you develop a risk response

and you implement that, and then you determine

the success of that response,

sometimes you have second and third order affects

to that response that create other risks,

or maybe opportunities, you don't know.

(laughter)

But and the quality aspect was some of the greatest

risks I faced.