Gold Medal Performance

Glen Frederick, director of risk management client services for the Government of British Columbia, helped introduce a new, permanent event at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver – enterprise risk management (ERM).

Thanks in part to the work of Phil Grewar, executive director of the Risk Management Branch and Government Security Office, Frederick and his team of risk consultants at the B.C. provincial government, the international Olympic Games from this time forward will be following an ERM-based approach to risk identification and management.

ERM is a process designed to identify potential events and causes that may affect an organization. It establishes whether these risks are within the organization’s risk appetite, or if they need to be treated, and further assesses how these risks might influence the achievement of the organization’s objectives. One key feature of ERM is that it analyzes the interrelationship of multiple risks across the entire organization.

For Frederick’s work at the Games and his involvement with the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) and RIMS Canada, he received the equivalent of ‘gold medal’ recognition from his peers, including the Ontario Risk and Insurance Management Society (ORIMS)’s 2011 Donald M. Stuart Memorial Award and the 2011 RIMS Harry and Dorothy Goodell Award. The Donald M. Stuart Memorial Award acknowledges Canadians who have made outstanding contributions in the field of risk management. The Goodell Award, RIMS’ most prestigious honour, recognizes individuals who have furthered the goals of the society and the risk management discipline through outstanding service and achievement. Frederick has been a member of RIMS for 25 years.

Frederick’s role in preparing for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games was largely in a prominent advisory capacity. He had been with the risk management department of the B.C. government since 1993. When B.C. decided to make a bid for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, the province established a Crown corporation called BidCorp. Frederick’s role with BidCorp included talking to stakeholders – the Government of B.C., Government of Canada, the host First Nations groups and representatives of the host cities of Vancouver and Whistler – to help identify strategic risks associated with bringing the games to B.C.

After the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded the games to B.C., the provincial government established The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC), a not-for-profit organization responsible for the planning, organizing, financing and staging of the games. It also created the Games Secretariat, which provided oversight over VANOC. Frederick and his team at the branch provided risk management expertise to the Games Secretariat and helped VANOC establish its enterprise risk management program, the first introduction of ERM to games risk management planning.

What does ERM mean in the Olympic Games context?

“We were looking at strategic risk,” Frederick says. “In other words, what would stop us from delivering a successful games? So it was things like: Can we have a cooperative relationship with the host cities? How do we finance the venue construction and make sure the construction is done on time? How do we ensure cooperation with the federal government on security and other important issues during the games, and what happens if we don’t? Could we continue to deliver medical care during the games if we had a pandemic flu epidemic, because pandemic flu was rearing its ugly head at the time. It was all of those things at a very high level. We also looked at the day-to-day things, like how do we make sure the highways get cleared? It really was an enterprise view. We looked at all of the strategic risks and most of the operational risks.”

In all, 400 risks were identified and rated on a “risk register.” Frederick did not provide specific examples of what was on the register, but did say that the highest risks associated with the games were security risks, which cost nearly $1 billion to address.

How does one narrow the risks of hosting an international event down to only 400 exposures? What about the potential of an earthquake happening during the games, or the death of an athlete, as happened when Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died after a horrific crash during a training run just hours before the opening ceremonies?

Frederick indicates these risks were considered, but may not have necessarily made the register, which evaluated the likelihood of significant risks and whether or not emergency procedures were already in place to respond to the risk. “Some risks you consider, but they don’t necessarily make the risk register since the likelihood or consequences are too little to really worry about,” he says. “Are there more than 400 risks [associated with the Olympic Games]? Absolutely. But we’re pretty confident the 400 on the risk register were the significant risks you could actually do something about, and for which there weren’t already programs in place.”

Risk management was not a new concept for Frederick, who gained experience in the approach during his seven-year tenure at Canada Post between 1985 and 1993. He left Canada Post as its manager of insurance and risk, having worked his way up the ranks to reach that position. He said a great deal of his grounding in risk management came courtesy of Canada Post.

“One thing I learned was to become involved in self-insurance as well as insurance, and to understand where self-insured retention was practical and economical,” he said, noting that this experience with self-insurance came in handy later in B.C., where he helped put together a self-insurance program for the province’s midwives. “I learned how to do risk analysis, how to look at the operations of the corporation and identify the various risks the corporation was open to. I learned how to sell risk management to executives.”

Frederick said he got involved in risk management in the first place because it offered an opportunity to combine his insurance background in underwriting with initiatives in loss control, risk identification and risk mitigation.

Frederick joined Canada Post in October 1985, after working for Royal Insurance in Winnipeg for eight years, primarily as an underwriter. Frederick was born and raised in small logging town to the northeast of Winnipeg, and he ended up at Royal after his initial career choice as a computer analyst didn’t pan out as planned.

“While I was working for [Royal], a couple of my friends got into the risk management business,” he said. “And I kept talking to them about what risk management was about, and it really interested me because it covered off more than just insurance, although insurance was a large interest of mine. I got into more things around risk control, risk mitigation, risk identification, I thought it all sounded really neat.”