Lincoln National Forest Participates in a Risk Management Session

John Prendergast, NIMO Safety Officer
providing background on risk mgmt

The week of November 7th, individuals from the Lincoln National Forest participated in a 3-day risk management session.  The first day consisted of an Introduction to Risk Management, as a significant number of their employees had not been through the basic session previously.  This gave them the ground work for the remainder of the weeks discussions.

Leadership panel discussion

On Monday afternoon a  leadership panel discussion was held, with representatives from the R3 Regional Office, Lincoln NF Supervisor's Office, District Ranger, and a Forest FMO.  This allowed participants to ask questions, of their leadership, and provide comments in regards to risk management and how they see it changing the way they do business on the Forest.

Supervisor's Office discussion group

On days 2-3, students were emerged into the newly developed "Risk Informed Decision-making".  This session allows the individuals to work through an incident using a variety of risk assessment tools and from three various decision making positions (strategic, deliberate, and time-critical).

Guadalupe Ranger District group

The students were broken up based on their organizational affiliation (Supervisor's Office/District Office) and were given background information on the scenario that they were to work through.  During the Strategic Risk Assessment portion (all of day 2), they were all asked to work and think like Agency Administrators.  This sparked a lot of great discussions.

Smokey Bear Ranger District group

 

Sacramento Ranger District group

On the third day, the participants were then provided with information on how to do deliberate risk management decisions and what tools they can use to help them with that process.  This decision space is similar to what an Incident Management Team performs.  Also on day three the time-critical decision space was discussed and several options for assessment tools were provided to the students to help them make their time-critical decisions.  These are the type of decisions that a line or field going person would make.

This was the first time that NIMO has put on both of these sessions (Introduction to Risk Management and Risk Informed Decision-making) at the same time.  It was a long, but successful, three days.  Currently, the session is geared toward a fire incident, however the message and tools can be utilized for all disciplines and projects within the Forest Service. 

There is risk in everything we do; assessing it is how we can lower the potential for a bad outcome.