■ WORK
Managing operational risk for resiliently reliable operations
Engagements are shaped around the operation in front of us. Most draw on some combination of the work below, with leaders and with the people closest to the work. Each follows the arc of Systems Learning: discovery of how work is actually done, understanding of how the influences on it interact, and realignment that keeps the operation within its margins.
■ 01
Operational risk management
Introducing executive leadership to the method and business case for managing risk by understanding what must go right and how it is going.
• Risk-based thinking across the organization
• Leadership engagement in high-risk operations
• Supporting strategic decision making
■ 03
Field Time
Working in the field one-on-one with senior operations leaders and alongside key personnel - building on what is working, helping leaders work through challenges as they arise, and integrating systems learning practices into governance, operating policies, and practices.
• Executive coaching for operations leaders
• Human and organizational performance (H&OP)
• Systems learning approaches, including learning teams
• Learning from actual work as well as from events
• Training and learning that strengthen organizational capacity
• Developing regulatory interaction strategies
• Integrating new actions into existing work and management systems, and retiring what the work has outgrown
■ 02
Operations Assessment
The Operations Assessment gives senior leaders a clear picture of how their operation is working. It looks at the influences that shape performance - people, relationships, organizational arrangements, and operating conditions - and at how the operation moves as those influences interact and change. It also shows where critical steps carry the most risk, how well existing approaches to managing risk are taking hold, and which requirements, documents, and controls still serve the work. The result becomes the basis for risk management tailored to the operation. Each assessment is conducted by a team of experienced operations practitioners assembled for the work.
• Assessing current operations
• Critical controls verification
• Performance-based independent oversight
• Preparing comprehensive assessment, field interaction, and event analysis programs
■ 04
Operations Systems
Strengthening the Operations Systems that let people make high-risk work succeed - flexible, worker-focused, integrated with how work is actually done, and kept lean through systematic review.
• Operations Systems and Integrated Safety Management
• Hazard evaluation and critical controls
• Work planning and control
• Contractor management
• Systematic review to keep requirements, procedures, and documents current, and to sunset what is no longer needed
How the work is approached
01
Operations integrates
Mission, technical systems, work, people, resources, responsibilities, information, controls, and changing field conditions are held together through Operations.
02
Study success as it happens
The most useful time to understand an operating system is while it is succeeding, before an event shapes how it is seen.
03
Risk-informed decisions
Each control, requirement, document, and corrective action earns its place. A sound decision may continue, reinforce, modify, reduce, redirect, sunset, or add.
04
Integrate into existing systems
New actions belong inside existing work and management systems, where they become part of how work is done. Regular, systematic review retires what the work no longer needs, so the system stays coherent as it changes.
05
People make systems work
People are fallible and essential. Systems should enable high performance, tolerate human and organizational failure, and allow only acceptable consequences.
06
Shape conditions
Leaders steward capability by shaping the conditions that enable successful work, preserving margins and supporting local expertise.
■ WHERE THE WORK HAS BEEN
U.S. Navy Submarine Service - Operations in the naval nuclear propulsion program under Admiral Rickover.
U.S. Department of Energy - Drafted DOE Order 5480.19, Conduct of Operations, and much of the technical and regulatory guidance that shaped conduct of operations across DOE and beyond.
Idaho National Laboratory - Operations leadership for research across some 225 labs and three nuclear facilities. Programs were rated exemplary in three independent Integrated Safety Management evaluations, and the site earned DOE VPP Star status in 2001. The service model built there became the backbone of Battelle's approach across the national laboratories.
High Reliability review - Used the Pantex High Reliability Operations framework to review INL systems for resilience.
Los Alamos National Laboratory - Established the learning team method through scores of learning teams; the method remains in use.
Chemical manufacturing - Human and organizational performance review.
American Airlines - Led the Operations-focused groundwork that supported the airline's implementation of resilience practices.
Oil and gas - Human and organizational performance work with ConocoPhillips in Alaska.
International Atomic Energy Agency - Leadership and resilient nuclear performance materials and workshops, taught internationally.
■ GROUNDED IN
Established operational disciplines
DOE Conduct of Operations · Integrated Safety Management · High Reliability Operations · CCPS process safety · IOGP / OEMS · Aviation SMS · Resilience engineering
■ CONTACT
Start a conversation
Something in your operation is working and you want to understand why, or the effort it takes to make work succeed is growing. Either is a good place to begin.
Jim@JamarOperations.com · (208) 521-0528 · LinkedIn · Near Asheville, North Carolina