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Financial Impacts and Risks Due to Sick-Leaves at a Swiss Luxury Watchmaker Factory.

The CFO of a client of ours, a Swiss Luxury Watches company, called the other day in a panic. He told us: “I have heard from a guy who works in the World Health Organization in Geneva which deals with Health around the World that this year is going to be the year of a severe flu pandemic. I need help in evaluating potential financial impacts due to sick-leaves”. It was not to us to discuss whether the scenario of…

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Missing the “big picture consequences”

The Italian Ministry of Health received a study from the National Institute of Health.  The study is entitled “Sentieri”. It shows that in the city of Taranto, Italy, there was a 10% mortality increase in the period 2003-2008 with respect to the general Italian average rate. Taranto is heavily contaminated, in particular by a large foundry. The trend reportedly confirms previous analyses, covering the period of 1995-2002. Those revealed mortality profile of the resident populations in sites belonging to the national list of…

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Risk Managers are retiring. Corporations have to fight the brain drain or be faced with over-exposures to risks.

Risk Managers are retiring. Corporations have to fight the brain drain or be faced with over-exposures to risks. Because the retirement of a corporate risk manager might be the source of critical exposures. It is actually a significant risk per se: one with a high likelihood (everyone ends-up retiring), and potentially large consequences. Only well planned proactive actions can mitigate it. Indeed Risk Managers are retiring. Corporations have to fight the brain drain or face over-exposures to risks. Risk Managers are…

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The devil is in the details.

“The devil is in the details.” explore what shortcuts in risk management leads to exposures and potential liabilities. We all love rounding numbers, i.e. “erasing the decimals” by pushing the value up or down to the nearest, or more pleasing, integer. When we let our “esthetics sense”, or our will to influence our audience, dominate, we will merrily jump way more than the decimals and come out with “media friendly rounded” values such as “one million people came to the…

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Close Calls and Human Biases

Close Calls and Human Biases, Near misses receive different interpretations in different countries, cultural backgrounds. Some societies consider them glorified achievements of intuitive semi-gods. In others they are just plain indicators of near failure. When near misses become repetitive, it can be assumed they are the result of a systemic flaw. Systemic flaws only require a small “twist of fate” to turn into an accident, possibly a disaster. In an industrial operation we know of, people became accustomed to a…

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Riskope Short Course at Colorado State University

Riskope Short Course at Colorado State University: On Sunday, October 14, 2012 (08:30AM to 5:00PM) Riskope will present a short course at Colorado University Tailings and Mining 2012 Conference  on ORE (Optimum Risk Estimates). This short one day course will bring much needed answers to anyone involved in evaluating tailings risks in projects. Those include pre-feasibility level, operations, decision-making in the mining industry. We will use plain language and our standard technical glossary . Because of that, no mathematical knowledge is…

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Hazards, Safety and Security Management of Mining (and other Natural Resources) Access Roads

Hazards, Safety and Security Management of Mining (and other Natural Resources) Access Roads are becoming very important issues. Indeed, off-site road transportation (access roads) to remote mining (coal copper, zinc, and other natural resources) operations (public, private or semi-private) poses a series of unique challenges to people in charge of their Safety, Security and Hazard Management. This course is based on real-life cases This course draws information from a number of real-life studies performed on this type of road by the…

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Two blasts have rocked saw mills in B.C. in recent times. One in January leveled the Babine Mill (Burns Lake), the other in April destroyed Lakeland Mills (Prince George).

Two blasts have rocked saw mills in B.C. In both cases, unfortunately, there were casualties. And in both cases, the blasts were apparently due to sawdust.   In both cases official inquiries are still ongoing In both cases official inquiries are still ongoing, but the media have been filled with hypotheses and discussions. Reportedly (Globe and Mail, April 27th) “the B.C. Government waited until the second catastrophe this week to issue province-wide guidelines, inspection regimes, deadlines and, possibly, new regulations”.…

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