Risk Assessment Management System (RAMS)
Understanding
One way to do risk assessment is through the Risk Assessment Management System (RAMS). RAMS helps to guide what are the next course of actions when met with a certain risk. There are two parts to RAMS. The first part is the likelihood of risk. The higher the likelihood of the risk, the higher the score. 1 being not expected to occur and 5 being almost certain to happen.
The second part of RAMS is the severity of the risk. With 1 being negligible and 5 being catastrophic.
Using the risk matrix (shown below), if the score of the risk is 1-3, it is considered low risk. A score of 4-12 is considered medium risk and 15 -25 is considered high risk. After measuring the severity and likelihood of the risk. The next step would be to find way to mitigate the possible risks. There are 4 ways to control these risks.
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Transfer: Transfer the risk to a 3rd party
Terminate: Avoid the situation as a whole and/or seek alternative solutions\
Tolerate: Accept the risk with minimal to no mitigation.
Treat: Reduce the likelihood of the risk occurring.
The method to control these risks is dependent on the score of the risk measured with the risk matrix as mentioned above. For lower scoring risks, tolerating the risks would be a good choice. For medium scoring risks, it would be recommended to transfer or treat the risk. Lastly, for high scoring risks, it would be wise to terminate.
Application
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For this project, my team used RAMS to list out some of the anticipated risks that may happen during the actual workshop day. Some of the risks include unstable Wi-Fi and miscommunication between staff and team members. As the workshop will be held online, there were many uncertainties and doing a risk assessment helped to alleviate some of the worries that I had.
Furthermore, it allowed every team member to be aware of the possible risks and help team members to be more prepared for the risks. We also planned the event around the risks. Since unstable Wi-Fi was a concern, we decided to assign Damien to share the screen as he had consistent stable Wi-Fi.
However, in the event where Damien would not be able to share screen, the other four members can step in as all of us have access to the slides. Furthermore, all team members are always communicating behind the scenes in the telegram group chat which makes things easier.
Fortunately, none of the anticipated risks occurred during the actual event and the backup plans my team had for the anticipated risks were not put in place
Values and Challenges
A good aspect of using RAMS as it allows one to clearly categorizes the various risks into various severities and shows the method one should use to mitigate the risks. This would make planning of contingency plans a smoother process as there is already a purpose of the plan in place already. Furthermore, it allows the team to prioritize which risk to consider first when planning the main plan of the project. This would reduce the number of severe risks that could occur during the actual event as they have already been considered into the main plan.
However, the negative aspect is that this table is absolute and it should not be the only form of risk assessment. Should the team members misjudge the risk and give the risks the wrong score, there is a chance that the team would be unprepared for the risk that will occur.