Planning and risk mitigation improves project performance.

The boom arm of a mobile crane is supported across the three tracks of the Metra’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks near the Westmont station just west of Cass Avenue, after the unit it was on tipped over, disrupting commuter service to the western suburbs. The crane was lifting a new overhead railroad signal at the time it tipped over. | Dom Najolia~Sun-Times

This distinctly not reassuring aphorism has a grain of truth to it.  How, as professional planners, do we approach this?  An anecdote may be illustrative – it certainly inspired some thoughts on the subject.  A crane fell onto the tracks used by the train I usually take, and there were delays. There are two important points to take away from this.

First, we can see the huge importance of planning.  Trains wouldn’t be full of people every day if they weren’t dependable. The fact that the train is a valuable as a form of transportation is a product of good planning.  Even if the schedule falls short of perfection, this doesn’t undermine the efficiency that the train  accomplishes day in and day out, for so many people.  That wouldn’t be possible without careful planning.

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Secondly, even though the risk of delays was realized, Metra’s response was good enough that passengers weren’t resentful.  Updates were frequent, and delays were made clear before passengers boarded.  A conductor came by and provided bottled water while we were stopped.  And, while mitigating the consequences of an already-realized risk is not the main goal of risk management, the actions Metra took did a remarkable amount of good.  This effective approach to dealing with risks would also be impossible without a plan in place.

Conversely, it’s pretty clear that there was a lack of effective planning in the deployment of the crane.  I wasn’t able to determine the genesis of the failure.  It could be that the crane was not sufficient for the load, or was stationed on some unstable earth.  Who knows?   One thing we know for sure:  if the base of a crane tips over while lifting a load and shuts down a commuter rail service, disrupting the commute of thousands, something went wrong with the plan.  There was a risk that either was not considered or not mitigated.

Of course, risk management is immensely complicated.  It involves identifying possible risks, acknowledging the limits of even doing that, considering the probabilities of risks and the results of realized risks, prioritizing, mitigating the probabilities and trying to alleviate the consequences of risks that are realized.

But for all of these complications, planning and risk management improve situations, sometimes by quite a lot.  All told, the efforts of planners facing the difficulties of risk management have saved incalculable amounts of time and money and have resulted in a similar amount of progress.  To get back to, “Man Plans, God Laughs” – serious, professional planning may not be perfect, but it is supremely worthwhile.