What can rock climbing teach us about project risk management?
As my long-suffering colleagues, family, and friends will attest, I like climbing, and I like talking about climbing.1
I'm definitely not alone in being an engineer who climbs - perhaps it's the attraction of the shiny metalwork, the fact that it has standards against which success can be measured, or the chance to get outdoors after a long week at work. I'd wager that the feeling of competence has something to do with it as well - climbing has skills that can be learned. Once you've learned those skills and become competent, you can use them to wow non-climbers, demonstrating skill in a way that impresses people. That immediate competence feedback isn't always available in work projects that can last months or years, and sometimes the most difficult element of engineering in a project goes unnoticed by the client, while they're wowed by the box you put it in. This might go a bit further to explaining why so many people in engineering climb.
Beyond why engineers climb, I'm interested in what we can learn from climbing to become better engineers. Beyond the well-established mental health benefits of physical activity, climbing also presents an opportunity to explore risk and develop an understanding of how speed and safety are interrelated.
To be very clear, while in this article I'm talking about physical, personal risk (of injury or death) in climbing, I'm using the word "risk" in the engineering context to mean project risks, not health and safety hazards, even those that only affect the individual performing the task. Nothing in this article is advocating for people to do away with risk assessments, PPE, or any proper safety procedure at work. I'm a huge advocate for treating workplace hazards seriously, using PPE and proper procedures, and ensuring things are done correctly, even when it takes longer or costs more. Being a climber who takes personal risk in their spare time shouldn't make you blasé about chemicals, high voltages, machine tools, or anything else at work.2
What am I thinking of? When I talk about project risk, I mean things that might cause harm to the project, by delaying it, increasing cost, damaging client or supplier relationships, or impacting team morale. While these outcomes won't leave any individual with an injury, they might impact the team's or business' ability to carry out projects, both immediately and in the future. The damage that results from these can be mapped to climbing injuries: some minor grazes are almost inevitable on any project, and very occasionally something larger might impact your ability to perform for a few weeks or months (the business equivalent of a sprained ankle), but the aim is to always avoid the serious, life-changing outcomes.3 In this post, I'll be discussing objective and technical risks,4 and how we can manage them in both the climbing and work environments.
Objective Risks
Objective risks are the risks that we can't control by skill, because they are (almost) entirely down to external factors. While you're climbing, you're exposed to the potential of rockfall, dangerous weather, or avalanche. Being the best-trained climber and able to pull really hard on a route can't actually prevent you from being taken out by any of these - it's a matter of luck, not skill. If any of these happen, it triggers an immediate reassessment of how best to get out of that situation as safely as possible. Sometime the answer is to back off, sometimes it's to press on, in the knowledge that reversing your course may be longer, harder, or more exposed to danger than simply finishing the route. I've experienced both decisions as a climber - on Càrn Mòr Dearg Arête 5 one winter, we reached the final slope of the ridge to discover that it was at risk of avalanche, and decided to reverse along the technical section and do a significantly longer walk out to avoid one small section where the risk was unacceptably high. In the Alps, on Arête de la Table, some substantial rocks fell past us on an early section of the route, but the better decision was to press on - trying to abseil back down the loose section we were on would have been much more dangerous (both to us and any teams below) than to carry on to the solid rock ahead.
That being said, there are two ways to minimise the exposure to these risks: research and speed. Research allows us to be aware of the dangers that lurk ahead: in both the climbing incidents I described above, we knew when we set out that the hazards were present. In the first case the avalanche forecast for that day had indicated the final slopes might present a hazard. This knowledge meant we stopped before we committed to the slope and assessed the snowpack, making sure we checked the danger level before we were exposed to it. In the Alps, the guidebooks had said the initial sections had loose rock, but that it only lasted briefly before improving. This allowed us to make an informed decision, and continuing on the understanding that the hazard was short, and we would not have to be exposed to that level of risk for long.
Research also allows that decision to be made early: if you know a route is very loose, or the weather forecast is poor, you can choose not to go out and do it at all. Sometimes this is the best choice, but a non-zero exposure to danger is necessary in order to get any climbing (or project) done. In project terms, research is taking the advice of those who have been before - experienced engineers, the information in textbooks, or even forecasts for business trends - and using them to understand what kind of risks might be present. If the project industry might suddenly be subject to new regulation; if the client is very challenging to work with; if the problem statement impossible to solve, you're better off knowing before you start. Sometimes we might choose to climb despite this risk, if the reward is right. The same is true for taking on a project with objective risks.
I think research is an easy win; knowing what might lie ahead is a good thing, and while it's possible to get stuck on the research phase and never get anything done, the more significant the technical challenge of a route, the more time I'm going to invest in researching how to do it. For a lunchtime stroll from my front door, I might not do any looking at the forecast at all, but if I'm heading out in Scottish winter to do a climb, I'll check multiple sources, make myself sure of exactly where my route is, and have plans for how to bail from it. Similarly, more technical, committing and risky engineering projects require a greater degree of due diligence before you take them on.
Speed is the more nuanced of these two, and the harder to balance. In theory, it's simple: when we can't reduce the magnitude of the objective hazard, we can reduce the overall risk we're exposed to by moving faster, spending less time exposed to the hazard. The compromise this creates is that increased speed can come at the cost of increased technical risk.
Technical Risks
Technical risks are the risks that arise because of the level of difficulty of the route. Hard routes come with more risk of falling off, or a move that the climber can't do, just as a more technical engineering project might have a problem that the team can't solve. Safety on a hard, consequential climbing route is improved by using better protected climbing techniques.
Soloing is the least protected way to climb - the climber uses no protection at all; it's only suitable where the climber is well within their comfort zone, and the risk of falling is very low. In project terms, a routine or very simple task can be soloed: no reviews or checks, no need to document and validate. The advantage? It's the fastest way to move, with the least faff.
At the other end of the scale (in mountaineering at least) is pitching everything: building an anchor, being belayed by the second, and placing gear regularly throughout the pitch. If the leader falls, the protection that the gear provides should form a backup, both saving the climber from the worst consequences of a fall, and checkpointing their progress to a certain extent. The compromise should be fairly obvious: progress is slow, and much more equipment must be carried. Similarly, in a project where things might go wrong, a team might use backup options like double-sourcing components, or spend much more time reviewing designs before choosing the way forward.
This is where the interplay of technical and objective risk starts: going faster can reduce the time of exposure to an objective hazard, but to do so we might need to use a technique that reduces our protection from technical risk. Similarly, being very cautious about technical risk slows us down. The safer technique might be so slow that we can't complete our project before the deadline, or we get benighted on a mountain. Depending on circumstances, these outcomes might be more dangerous than taking a fall.
We're usually forced to make some sort of compromise, choosing a way to climb that suits the blend of hazard present on the route we want to do. On UK rock routes, this would often be pitching - the scale of the terrain is small enough that we don't need to move that fast, and the objective danger isn't too high. In the Alps, we end up simulclimbing, with two or more climbers protected by a few pieces of gear between them: the consequences of a fall here can be bad, but are unlikely to be fatal, and it allows us to move fast enough to reduce risks from crevasses, seracs, etc. Your project should do the same, working in a way that takes into account the kind of risks you're exposed to.
There remains one final tool in the arsenal of the climber/engineer: experience. Spending more time climbing builds our strength, flexibility, and understanding to allow us to complete more difficult routes, just as being a more experienced engineer makes technical challenges easier. Someone with experience will have previous challenges to draw from when solving a new one, and can have more confidence in their abilities. While training (a degree or indoor climbing are both classics) are an important building block of the experience we have, neither is a substitute for spending time on real-world challenges. Exposure to real risk is the only way to find out if you're ready, but that risk should be properly understood before it's undertaken.
Ultimately, all projects involve risk, and that's why there's reward, but it's only when we understand risk that we can choose the right way to tackle it.
1. Sorry to all of the above. Feel free to tell me to shut up from time to time.
2. And in my experience there isn't any particular correlation between undertaking risky activities outside work and taking H&S risks in the workplace. Many people with risky hobbies are used to doing checklists and using safety gear in their free time, so it comes naturally when it's part of the job.
3. Think this metaphor is getting a bit stretched? We're only just getting started...
4. UK trad climbers can make the comparison to adjectival and tech grades.
5. A great combination of Gaelic and French diacritics for all the linguists to enjoy.
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