What is risk engineering?

[Nadine Cranenburgh]

One of the objectives of REBOK is to explore the essence and boundaries of risk engineering. To that end, we have been working on a FAQ page that explores what risk engineering is and how it relates to different engineering disciplines, project and risk management. It would be great to get the conversation started about what risk engineering means to other members of the REBOK Community. Comments and input welcome.

[Kevin Foster]

AS/NZS ISO 31000:2018 defines ‘risk’ as “the effect of uncertainty on objectives” and 
 ‘risk management’ as “coordinated activities to direct and control an organization with regard to risk”.   

Therefore it is implied that ‘engineering risk’ is the effect of uncertainty on engineering objectives.  

If we accept that risk engineering is a specialised form of risk management, then to be consistent with ISO 31000,
‘risk engineering’ could be defined as coordinated activities to direct and control an organization with regard to engineering risk.

The key advantages of defining risk engineering in this way is that we do not need to redefine ‘engineering’ and we remain consistent with ISO 31000 terminology.