An Integrated Approach To Risk and Compliance Obligations

Should you diversify your risk consultants and providers?

Choosing a provider that can deliver a holistic understanding of overall risk is paramount. With a holistic provider, you can streamline key attributes. Additionally, you can ensure necessary frameworks, assessment, response, reporting and monitoring are easier to manage. 

Many building owners and operators mistakenly believe that diversifying your providers will reduce overall liability and risk for your portfolio. In practice, however, we’ve observed that the more providers are involved in the process, the narrower the focus becomes. For example, providers will concentrate on a singular facet of property risk such as fire safety. This focused concentration limits a holistic view of risk for the entirety of your assets.

Not looking at your assets holistically also limits your ability to enhance life and building safety. It prevents you from proactively managing your risk and compliance objectives and coordinating data.

If you utilise a single provider to cover each of your responsibilities, you are inviting an expert who has a thorough understanding of your specific risks and compliance needs.

How an integrated approach will close gaps in your current strategy

We can effectively define property risk across 3 key considerations.

Life safety

Life safety encapsulates factors immediately affecting your staff and occupants’ health and wellbeing.

Building safety

Building safety spans the responsibilities of building owners and managers across utilities and resources designed to mitigate risks across the asset environment.

Environmental risk

Environmental risk culminates in the greater environment of your building. Life and building safety plus changing conditions in and around the site itself affects environmental risk. From public works and events to construction and maintenance.

3 core practices of risk and compliance

1. Emergency planning spans environmental factors such as emergency management plans and evacuation diagramsto human factors like training. You can enhance occupant safety with immersive training and tools.

2. Property risk enables clients to view and manage the inherent risk profile of assets. This holistic view also assists in managing site-specific risks. From hazardous materials and asbestos to work health and safety and hygiene.

3. Essential safety measures ensure a continued plan to maximise occupant safety and always meet necessary requirements. You achieve this by maintaining a consistent approach to regulatory and legislative criteria, audits, inspections, testing and reports.

The overall aim of an integrated approach is to unify the information between these layers to deliver control. Additionally, you should aim to establish oversight of risk management and mitigation.

Enhance your capabilities with digital integrations 

Ideally, you should engage a supplier that can comprehensively obtain and utilise data to help inform key decisions in real-time.

We gather a wealth of information and showcase it through our digital data and compliance platform, Hendry Client Portal. The platform gives you a risk-consolidated view of your assets, simplifying compliance data and documentation. It also establishes an easier way to manage contractors and on-site personnel.

Our risk assessment and mitigation framework uses your data to provide a complete risk profile rating across assets. The facility’s existing condition and compliance is assessed and audited against several risk categories. This insight then forms the basis of your priorities across each site to resolve issues, planned maintenance and critical works.

For example, you can look across a building and identify that you need more assigned wardens. You can see which multiple defects have yet to be rectified. You can ascertain whether WHS and environmental compliance criteria have been met.

Without having this information in one place, you cannot correlate data and make effective decisions for the whole of a building or the greater portfolio. More to the point, having this oversight allows you to strategically plan and manage the safety of each occupant. Additionally, you can maintain the longevity of your risk preparedness and the infrastructure that supports this.

Integrate your approach to risk and compliance 

To sum up, approaching risk and compliance via an integrated approach is a far more efficient and cost-effective process. The integrated approach also enhances life safety at all levels. It’s about resolving disconnected practices and effectively centralising their outcomes. As a result, you can reduce your risk profile via a reliable data-driven view.