Effective risk management ‘needs top-level support’: NASA

Dr Perera has been invited to share his knowledge and experience on effective risk management by the Risk Management Institution of Australasia (RMIA).

The Association will host Dr Perera on a six-city tour in April, during which he will present on key features of NASA’s risk management programme.

Prior to his trip, Dr Perera said NASA’s core risk strategy was to use systematic risk processes and tools for early identification of potential conditions that could adversely affect the performance, schedule, cost or safety of its programmes, projects or systems.

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“Determining the probability of occurrence and the magnitude of potential consequences enables risk-informed decision-making and proactive planning designed to improve the success of our missions,” he said.

There was a “renewed vigour” on risk analysis and assessments to improve safety after 2003, when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crew members.

Dr Perera said there were many lessons to learn from NASA’s risk management programmes. These include:

• Job descriptions must explicitly include risk management
• The culture must make it clear that everyone should be responsible for risk management
• There must be a formally documented, well-defined, structured and understood risk management process
• Comprehensive, structured risk identification processes and tools should be implemented
• Continuous, event-driven technical reviews must be used to identify risks
• Continuous, iterative assessment and prioritising risks should be used to help frame decision-making.

Dr Perera said that risk analysis and risk management must be made independent from project management to ensure transparency.

Risk management needs to be integrated with project decision-making so that all key decisions are risk-based and incentives and disincentives need to be adopted to foster good practices beyond regulatory requirements, he added.

Finally, risk managers need to conduct continuous improvement on the risk management process itself, he said.

Specifically, Dr Perera is currently examining human health risks for extended long-duration missions.

These include muscle atrophy caused by shrinking muscle fibres, increased loss of bone minerals and mass, and increased chances of renal stones.

“There can be reduced cardiac functions from long-term exposure to zero gravity. Beyond low-Earth orbit, where the protection of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere are no longer available, space radiation may place astronauts at significant risk of radiation, sickness and increased lifetime risk for cancer, central nervous system effects and degenerative diseases,” he said.

Health risks can be mitigated by extensive daily aerobic and anaerobic exercise programmes, dietary changes and supplements, radiation shielding and protection, and close monitoring during flight and post-flight, he said.

Dr Perera said risk was intrinsic to any exploration efforts, including space. “Exploration is done despite the risks, because of the huge potential rewards for humankind,” he said.

He described his job as “a mixture of the traditional, fast-paced, customer-oriented corporate environment combined with the research and analytics of a university campus or R&D organisation”.

Human elements are his greatest challenge. “Human interactions within a system are often hardest to predict and usually the root cause of many costly risks,” said Dr Perera.

The NASA risk manager’s tour starts in Perth on 4 April, then proceeds to Canberra on 6 April, Sydney on 7 April, Adelaide on 11 April, Melbourne on 13 April and Brisbane on 18 April.