Risk Register Database (1 Viewer)

My next project is a Risk Register. The goal is disturbingly vague.

Any words of wisdom most welcome.

That really depends on what kind of risks you are going to work with.
I can help out with regards to the maritime world.
In addition a bit on work environment although that is most likely governed by national rules where I would not be able to assist much.

If you have not previously worked with risks and risk management, then for familiarization with project risk management I can recommend this highly readable and practical book Identifying and Managing Project Risk: Essential Tools for Failure-Proofing Your Project,
Tom Kendrick PMP, http://www.amazon.com/Identifying-M...dentifying+and+managing+project+risk+kendrick

How are you getting on? Is this a dedicated application or a generic one? It seems I too have one in my schedule, in about 6 to 8 weeks - a generic one, hopefully commercializable, so to speak. Voluntary guinea pigs will get a free copy, but no source code

I'm starting a similar task.



This one is to be used for heavy construction projects (roads, bridges, freeways, transit, utilities, etc.)



I have been given a spreed sheet from another project to base is on.



I've attached that.

Andy1968,

First, tacking on to an old thread is not the best way to get quick help. You could have started a new thread and then referenced this thread as one approach.

But down to your call for help: The truth is that Access isn't ALWAYS the correct solution. In some cases, other utilities might be better. EXCEL isn't bad. Tedious, maybe, but not terrible. Having said that, it is possible to do this with Access but you will most likely only be able to use a limited subset of the power of Access for organization.

For the columns where you have risk choices like None, Low, Medium, High, Impossibly High, etc., you can use a combo box to fill in such things. I see several other columns where you appear to have some kind of drop-down selector, so you can streamline the choices and normalize the dataset to isolate the various lists of choices from the main body of the individual risk table. That normalization will help shrink the amount of data to keep per risk entry and will allow you to build reports that are either project-centric, risk-type centric, or frequency-centric.

Much of what you are going to have to do is to manage text-oriented data entry for the detailed description columns or select options for each header you need to track. Normalization will help with the select process. Text data entry? You're on your own for that part.

You also need to define your end goals for this project. To do any serious computations, your bosses or your actuaries will have to assign risk levels to the the choices for that column. You should be able to search the web for "risk analysis" and "risk mitigation" as topics. TRUST me, there is wealth of data out there in the web. The U.S. Navy used this heavily for new project analysis and, since we were a hosting site, new service analysis.

If you are heading towards doing what the Navy did, you have a list of risks. You need to identify for each one the kind of risk (and you have several check-boxes for that), probability of risk (you call it priority, I think), detailed nature of risk, actual dollar value of risk IF IT HAPPENS, frequency of risk (one-time or recurring and if the latter, how often), cost of mitigation, effectiveness of mitigation, cost of ignoring, effect of ignoring, etc.

From such things you can compute what each risk costs you to ignore or to mitigate after-the-fact or to partly or completely prevent (if possible). If this is like any of the risk matrices I have seen before, your goal will be to roll up or otherwise summarize the project risk as an annual cost/benefit ratio so that you can assign a budget to a mitigation staff or in some other way refine the overhead costs of taking on certain types of projects. Which means your business sales group can "sharpen their pencils" to better estimate overhead costs on future projects.

I have worked with this kind of analysis but this is usually something more oriented to a project manager type to define the terms and assign values where possible. I had to sit in on some new-project initial risk assessments which is why I know as much as I do about it but I expressly DO NOT claim to be an expert on the subject.

That's a lot to consider Doc Man!



For what we are doing, I don't think we need the level of complexity you used.



This is only going to be a project management tool.



The risks we are tracking are only related to impacts to the schedule and costs of the project for the owner.



We don't need to track risks like setting up a crane in high wind, etc. These are borne by the construction contractor.