Anyone who’s ever been involved in a risk assessment workshop will know that once you get started you can identify a shed-load of risks. There are just so many of them out there.

But, whilst some risks are potentially extremely serious, there are many others that are somewhat less significant. And, let’s face it, it’s the significant risks that we need to focus on. So we need to sort the wheat from the chaff and avoid getting too bogged down in stuff that isn’t overly important.

One way to do this is to focus the risk assessment on our essential or time-critical functions, processes or assets and to set a specific objective for the workshop, such as identifying risks to cash flow or the supply chain or to the continued operation of a critical process, facility or piece of equipment.

There is, of course, therefore the implication that we know what’s essential or time-critical. And, if we haven’t already done so, an excellent way of identifying these things is to do a business impact analysis – before doing the risk assessment. But that’s another story…