Planning & documents
What is design risk management?
Design risk management is identifying risks created by a design and eliminating or reducing them at the drawing rather than leaving them to be controlled on site.
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<img src="https://buildoptix.co.uk/glossary/design-risk/diagram.svg" alt="design risk management — diagram from BuildOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
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<a href="https://buildoptix.co.uk/glossary/design-risk">What is design risk management?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://buildoptix.co.uk">BuildOptix</a>
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</figure>The hierarchy is eliminate, reduce, inform — in that order. A risk register that informs about hazards nobody tried to eliminate has skipped the two steps that actually change the outcome.
It reaches beyond construction into how the finished building is cleaned, maintained and eventually demolished, which is a much longer period than the build and one designers rarely see.
Its output feeds the pre-construction information and eventually the health and safety file, so it is the start of a chain rather than a document produced for its own sake.
What goes wrong in practice
- Risk registers listing generic construction hazards rather than ones this design creates.
- Informing used as the first response rather than the last.
- Maintenance and cleaning risks never considered.