How much risk does the city tolerate? Flooding was never a serious risk before 2014; it is now . There is now a Risk Registry

News 100 redBy Pepper Parr

February 18th, 2020

BURLINGTON, ON

 

The word risk is creeping into sentences in documents and conversations around city hall.

City Manager Tim Commisso is a big believer in knowing what the risks are and then being as ready as you can for what might be coming your way.

While it isn’t all that clear to many on just what the CRM system is going to do for the public once it is up and running – one of the things it will do is alert staff to risk. When a complaint comes in from a citizen, under the CRM system, it goes into the Knowledge Bank. If there are enough complaints about something that concern could/might work its way into the budget deliberations.

FLOOD red SUV rushing

Flooding wasn’t seen as a really serious risk before 2014 – that changed when several hundred homes were flooded as the result of a flash series of rain storms

Someone can ask: Does this concern we are hearing about mean anything?

An example (totally hypothetical) is the jet fuel line that runs through the downtown core of the city. It is at the top of the parking lot between John and Elizabeth. A number of people who appear to be very knowledgeable on the subject of fuel lines have delegated on this particular line. Is it an issue? How often has it been mentioned? Did Staff catch the concern?

Leah Busetti

Leah Bisutti maintains the Risk Registry – now a critical management document.

As part of the risk management approach to running the city that City manager Tim Commisso brings to the table there is now a “risk registry” that is maintained by a member of his office staff.

When the Registry was being discussed at the Audit Committee meeting there were no questions from council – they had bigger fish to fry.

The document that Leah Bisutti maintains is important – the number of items tagged as high risks is a little on the alarming side.

The creation of the list was quite detailed. In addition to interviewing all members of council as requested by Audit Committee, there were also 30-minute confidential interviews with members of Burlington Leadership Team and a risk workshop to come to a consensus on the top ten risks. Time was also spent to identify probability, impact, and present and future mitigation.

risk registry

Identifying risk and attempting to manage that risk are new city foci.

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1 comment to How much risk does the city tolerate? Flooding was never a serious risk before 2014; it is now . There is now a Risk Registry

  • In the 90’s, I Anne, developed a risk indicator tool for a national organization outside of the corporation for which I worked. I was invited to do so based on the work they knew I had done as a quality assurance analyst employee of the corporation where the President of the organization and I both worked. I made a half hour presentation and saw the Board made up of working members unanimously accept the tool it had taken me less than a full work week over a two month period to design. The comments received incuded the tool was simple and effective unlike the bureaucratical tools they had prevously tested and rejected.If my memory serves me well and based on their unsolicited reference letter it cost them under $1,000 and worked extremely well to satisfy the governments they billed and the clients that included Terry Fox who they served, How things have changed!!!