Requirements for a web-based tool for operational risk management

Every workplace presents several risks: some of them could have a low likelihood but a high severity, others could happen frequently, and they have a very low impact. Anyhow, all the detected risks found must be monitored independently of their likelihood and severity. The word “risk”, from the French “risqué”, in accord with the Oxford English Dictionary, could be defined as “A situation involving exposure to danger”. Although other definitions of risk are also trusty and reliable, like the one from the Occupational Health & Safety Advisory Services (OHSAS) that says: “Risk is a combination of the likelihood of an occurrence of a hazardous event or exposure and the severity of injury or ill health that can be caused by the event or exposure”, the most realistic definition of risk is the one according to the International Organization of Standardization publication ISO 31000:2009, that defines the risk as the "Effect of uncertainty on objectives". The directives of ISO 31000 and ISO 31010 explain the users how to manage the risk and how to perform a risk assessment. This work outlined the necessity to assess the risks inside the companies, by using a well-built risk register with several innovative features and tools. A qualitative and quantitative analysis has been conducted in this work for describing two different case studies: the development of a new prototype and a functional procedural analysis. The first case study is related to a request of an Irish power generation company to develop an innovative risk register in order to synthesize their existing risk registers (CAR and GRR) in a single software. The aim of the work is to develop the new software with a user-friendly interface and an investment evaluation module. The second case study of this work analyses the importance of managing operational risks by using a software which uses a logical-phenomenological model.