Lack of Evidence?

Scenario: You've got a great claim-argument-evidence safety case structure, but that key bit of evidence is missing. Therefore, the safety argument is unfounded. What do you do?

An example could be the lack of an EWS1 form for the external cladding. Whilst it is important to have an action plan to gather the evidence, what could be done in the short term to mitigate this?

One extreme could be to decant the building. Or, we could conduct a risk assessment to see if mitigations can be defined to ensure that the risk remains as low as reasonably practicable, whilst the assessment of the cladding is completed?

We need to think of mitigations to stop the event happening, but also mitigations if the event occurs.

Mitigations could include providing a Waking Watch. But, how are we confident (developing on one of my older posts) that the Waking Watch is 'awake' and doing their job - we need to monitor them, either with tech (monitored CCTV or door fobs showing them entering doors through the night, for example), or maybe providing a team of people, and not just a single person.

Cladding may be a controversial example, but if you are lacking evidence, think how can you mitigate this? A risk assessment with mitigations could resolve this in the short term whilst the evidence is collected. But, you must be confident (with evidence) that the mitigations actually work!

RiskFlag has run workshops all over the country with HRB clients doing exactly this, in our Safety Case and Bow Tie platforms. Happy to chat! info@riskflag.com