Risk

How inventory is related to your organization’s risk

September 17, 2020 | 2 min read
Inventory management

A company can learn a lot of things about themselves during a risk assessment. Organizations learn what their risks are, of course, but they also learn about the state of their equipment. They learn if certain doors are often left open, if cameras are working, and if it’s been a while since they inspected their fire extinguishers. Clients often learn exactly how much equipment they actually have on site or what their assets are.

During one assessment, for example, I counted a certain number of security cameras. When I presented my report, the client told me I must have missed a camera — I’d counted one less than they had. When we went to the command center to find the missing camera in my report, we discovered it was literally missing. Someone had stolen it.

As a result of the inspection, the company had an inventory of their cameras. While that incident was accidental, companies can easily use Circadian Risk to keep track of building inventory.

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The link between floor plans and inventory

Floor plans are an invaluable tool for organizations: they’ve been used for evacuation plans, emergency planning, conceptual plans, and of course for risk assessment. Circadian Risk’s software is built on floor plans and visualizations of risk — when an expert uses Circadian Risk to perform a risk assessment, they use a map of the site to document risks. Using our software, an expert can show decision-makers exactly where a door is often left ajar.

The same function can — and often is — used to record inventory of countermeasures. The number of fire extinguishers and their locations, for example, are listed in every risk assessment performed with Circadian Risk. So are the locations of cameras and other countermeasures. Once those countermeasures are recorded – they’re in the system. The next expert who does an assessment knows where they are, and can check their locations and conditions without having to recreate the inventory.

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Why use Circadian Risk for inventory?

This sort of inventory can go beyond countermeasures. In our upcoming release, we’ll make it possible for you to include other items in your inventory in our software. Those items can include assets like cash registers, tangible property, or even executives or other VIPs. This sort of tool allows you to place a value on each item in your inventory, knowing how much value each item has will help you better understand the risk at a site.

Most risk assessments are concerned with the probability of an incident occurring, but an inventory can help determine the severity of an incident. If you know how much every asset is worth, you’ll have a better idea of the severity of an incident, should one occur.

Once organizations start to understand their inventory they’ll also learn other important information — what’s the life cycle of a camera, for example, and when should equipment be updated?

This is a powerful tool for assessors, because it’s not just data management — your inventory helps shed light on how much risk is associated with each of your sites. It’s a tremendous value for organizations that don’t know exactly what they have yet.

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