Risk Management Case Study: The Fire at Notre Dame Podcast (S1E1)

The title of this discussion may lead you to think it is dedicated to people involved in the construction industry. Risk management lessons learned from this fire in Paris can be applied to many areas of the federal government, especially fields like cybersecurity.

If you take notes during the interview, you will write down topics like risk appetite, complacency, probability, impact, monitoring, and velocity. It is almost as if you could replace “Federal agency cyber breach” for “Notre Dame Cathedral” and have the first chapter in a book on federal cybersecurity.

The Notre Dame Cathedral is a limestone edifice that has not seen a serious fire in 850 years. Still, they were prudent enough to have a risk management plan. A fire protection plan was put together by experts over six years. Unfortunately, it failed.

The most vulnerable part of the cathedral was the enormous wooden attic. Officials did not have sprinklers or firewalls because they decided it would be a fire risk just to install those preventative measures.

You can learn many lessons from this discussion: what is the impact on delays on a risk decision? what kind of assumptions are valid? What external delay factors can impact risk management?

Featured Speakers:

• Tom Brandt, Chief Risk Officer, U.S. Internal Revenue Service
• Alice Miller, Chief Risk Officer, Millennium Challenge Corporation
• Dr. Natalie K. Houghtby-Haddon, Associate Director GW CEPL & Assistant Professor, GW College of Professional Studies