Just like previous years, this year Barry Holt, Director of Policy and Research, and I presented lectures for the MSc students in Facility Management at the Bartlett, University College London (UCL). The topics we covered were about the concepts and techniques of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). For ERM concepts, we presented and discussed topics such as terminology and basic risk concepts, strategic and operational risks, risk tolerance, risk evaluation and treatment, risk retention and transfer, risk appetite etc. Similarly, the techniques’ section involved topics such as risk ranking (risk matrix), ALARP, brainstorming, HAZOP, fault tree and event tree analysis, SWOT analysis, Gaussian, Binomial and Poisson distributions, Monte-Carlo simulation etc.

The students, who were mainly working in the FM field and came from a range of nationalities, found these lectures useful and the response was exceptional. We believe that it’s important for students to be aware of several risk types as they may come across some of these risks while working on different projects. These risks, if not managed effectively could have a negative impact on the completion of the project. As a result, we covered major risk types (e.g. both strategic and operational risks) and presented relevant examples to clarify the concepts about these risk types. We also addressed, in the lectures, the concept of opportunity as the reverse side of the risk coin. Many of the students expressed their views that the risk management techniques we covered in these lectures are valuable as they would not only help them to understand the level of each risk but also provide support to mitigate the risk level at an early stage. For instance, by using a risk matrix technique, we can understand the level of each risk by looking at its likelihood and severity and to check whether the control measures already in place are adequate or not to handle such risk.

It’s been a great experience teaching and being involved in discussions with the MSc students at UCL; we hope that the material we covered for these lectures would be of great benefit for them in the future careers.

Dr. Shahzeb Ali Malik, Technical and Research Manager, IIRSM