Integrating Safety into Project Risk Evaluation

During project acquisition and planning, companies routinely assess commercial, contractual, schedule, and delivery risks before deciding whether to pursue or accept a project. These structured go/no-go or pursuit-stage reviews form the foundation of responsible business management.

However, while safety assessments traditionally focus on hazards and regulatory requirements, true compliance cannot be defined without first understanding the company’s project role and associated duty of care. The scope of safety responsibility — and the complexity of managing it — depends on whether the company acts as, for example, an Engineer, CM-as-Agent, or Prime/Controlling Employer.

The Project Safety Complexity (SCI) Calculator integrates this consideration into the company’s broader project risk evaluation process. Using information already captured for project role, scale, and organization, it adds project-specific hazards and quantifies the complexity of managing safety as part of the same framework used to evaluate commercial and execution risks.

From Risk Categories to Integrated Indicators

Most corporate project risk evaluations already include:

• Project scale and duration
• Delivery model and contract type
• Organizational structure and interfaces
• Company’s declared project role (Engineer, CM-as-Agent, CMAR/Prime, etc.)

These same factors directly influence safety management demand. The SCI Tool draws on these existing data fields — adding a layer of hazard profile evaluation that connects operational realities to project configuration.

Data Collection and Logic

The tool collects both project-level and hazard-level inputs:

Each input contributes to the Safety Complexity Index (SCI) through a deterministic formula:

SCI = (Hazard% × 0.45) + (Complexity% × 0.55)

• Hazard % reflects the proportion and severity of hazard domains present.
• Complexity % incorporates project role, scale, and structural interfaces.
• Weighting slightly favors complexity to reflect management burden rather than exposure count alone.

The SCI output is normalized to a 0–100 scale, categorized as:

• Low (≤30) – Routine or low-hazard projects
• Moderate (31–60) – Defined hazards, manageable complexity
• High (61–80) – Multi-discipline, high-interface projects
• Elevated (>80) – Major or program-scale undertakings requiring enhanced governance

Report and Outputs

After submission, the tool automatically generates a formatted project report delivered by email in PDF format, including:

1. Project Summary – role, scale, and parameters used.
2. Hazard Profile Table – selected hazards with OSHA and Life-Saving Rule (LSR) references.
3. Complexity Analysis – weighting of project factors.
4. Calculated SCI Index – numeric value with interpretive category.

Projects are logged in the company’s Power BI dataset, forming part of the Company Hazard Profile — a cumulative view of hazard frequencies and complexity levels across all projects.

Using the SCI Index

The SCI Index serves as a decision-support indicator rather than a compliance score. It allows leadership teams to:

• Compare safety complexity side-by-side with commercial or schedule risk ratings.
• Calibrate EHS resource allocation and oversight effort to project demands.
• Identify high-complexity projects early and plan enhanced management involvement.
• Track portfolio trends — e.g., whether the company is shifting toward more complex or higher-hazard work.

Because the SCI draws its structural parameters (project role, scale, etc.) directly from the company’s existing risk tool, results stay synchronized with other enterprise metrics without redundant data entry.

From Projects to Portfolio Intelligence

Each project report feeds into an aggregated Power BI dashboard, producing a Company Hazard Profile that visualizes the relative occurrence of hazard domains across the enterprise.

Figure 1 – Company Hazard Profile (Power BI view) Each bar represents the frequency of hazards reported through the Project Safety Complexity Tool. Aggregated results reveal where exposures concentrate, enabling targeted training and prevention initiatives.

Conclusion

The Project Safety Complexity Tool integrates seamlessly into a company’s existing project risk framework. By combining hazard-profile information with project-scale and role data already captured in other sections of the system, it quantifies safety complexity in a way that aligns with financial and operational risk categories.

This integration ensures that safety considerations enter executive decision-making at the same time as commercial and delivery risks — supporting informed go/no-go judgments, optimized resource planning, and a unified view of enterprise risk.

#Safety #RiskManagement #ProjectGovernance #EHS #PowerBI #DataDrivenSafety #eSafetyPro