Proposed methodology for performing Risk Identification Workshops based on safety climate paper to System Safety & sars annual conference 2009

Risk Assessment and Management has become a standard tool within the project management cycle. Among the key tasks within the Risk Assessment and Management framework, Risk Identification (RID) normally involves comparatively significant effort in collaboration with personnel from multiple disciplines or functions in the form of a RID Workshop. Many practitioners and participants apply a “one size fits all” approach to running a RID Workshop despite differences in the level of safety culture maturity of the organisation. In this way, the technique is effective in industries where safety climate is mature, but it is less effective when participants are from an organisation with a less mature safety climate. In consideration of this, the objectives of this paper are to: (i) discuss the constraints and difficulties in applying the standard RID technique; (ii) discuss common indicators of an organisation´s safety climate maturity, in other words, what a “mature safety climate” looks like or the contrary; and finally (iii) propose methodologies to adjust the conventional approach to enhance the effectiveness of the RID Workshop, based on the organisation´s safety climate maturity.