In this Greatest Hits episode of Risk Management: Brick by Brick, Jason Reichl is joined by Marco Romero, Risk Management & Claims Specialist at Harkins Builders, a leading construction management and general contracting firm. Prior to joining Harkins, Marco spent nearly a decade working in Risk Consultancy at Simmerer Insurance. With such a strong background, Marco is a trusted advisor within his company and beyond.

In this episode, Jason and Marco discuss the importance of effective communication, gathering information, and using tools such as centralized data systems to manage risk. Further, they touch on the potential future of risk management in the construction industry, and the potential for automation to make the life of a risk manager easier.

To find out how TrustLayer manages risk so that people can build the physical world around us, head to TrustLayer.io. 

04:14 - 07:39 — Managing the Three Buckets of Risk Management - Risk management can be broken down into three buckets: governance, known execution, and mitigation. Effective communication is key to balancing the three and managing the process from start to finish. Unfortunately, it is impossible to be an expert in everything, so having an open channel of communication between the experts in each department allows for preparation for all risk cases. 

09:28 - 11:37 — Communicating the Inherent Risk of a Decision - Marco’s organization uses an internal centralized grading system to communicate the inherent risks of decisions. It is majority based on historical data gathered from everywhere, including external to the organization. It provides the reasoning for making decisions, and allows for an archive to be created for every project team reference in new projects. This allows for the creation of new approaches, and for learning from the past. 

11:37 - 15:58 — Fostering Effective Communication and Engagement with Vendors - Working with vendors is a partnership, and Marco sees every trade partner as a true partner on the projects they are working on. To Marco, the best way to foster engagement and collaboration with partners is to engage in face-to-face and telephone conversations. Avoid leaving anyone in the dark as you are all trying to achieve the same goal. Allowing everyone a voice helps to encourage partnerships that thrive and are maintained over time. Further, not every trade partner will be an insurance expert, and so it is important to lay clear the expectations and processes that will be involved. Maintain communication and hear them out; show them you’re people they want to work with.

19:21 - 21:12 — Managing When Things Go Wrong - Risk managers have to expect unexpected incidents to occur, and figure out how to resolve them. One key method is to maintain transparency across all parties. It can feel as if insurance carriers are the ‘bad guys’, but really they are working towards the same goal, to get the right risk mitigation measures in place to prevent things getting out of control if a situation goes awry. Everyone needs to be kept in the loop.