RISK ASSESSMENT Golder Associates recognizes the increasing complexity of the aggregate industry, and the need to use risk assessment and decision analysis to assist with planning and prediction of future trends within this industry. This can necessitate complex decision making processes with respect to regulatory approvals, development of a green-field site, expansion of an existing site, operational considerations, different management and mining concepts, as well as assessment of financial risks associated with new business ventures. Golder is a leader in the field of decision and uncertainty analysis (sometimes called risk assessment and management) and can provide you with higher levels of confidence in making good project decisions. We have developed innovative analytical tools, using them on a wide range of public and private projects worldwide. Our staff focuses on helping you make and defend decisions that are most likely to result in the set of ultimate consequences that best satisfies the collective desires and requirements of all stakeholders, including regulatory agencies. We employ a structured decision process with appropriate consideration of uncertainties. Explicit and focused on consequences, our decision and risk analysis methods consider stakeholders' preferences and requirements among the consequences, and inherent uncertainties in those consequences, yet are flexible enough to be cost-effective for virtually any project. Our Process Working with stakeholders, Golder establishes the decision criteria (e.g. regarding total life-cycle cost), including if desired, preferences among, and constraints on, those performance measures.  Working with knowledgeable experts, we 1) define the system, in terms of activities and/or components, and any alternatives to be considered; 2) define the various conditions, processes and events that affect performance of that system; and 3) explicitly assess their significant uncertainties, in place of making arbitrary assumptions. We then model the entire project, predicting the uncertain consequences of each decision alternative. We can check the predicted consequences for compliance with project requirements and also conduct tradeoffs among consequences, consistent with stakeholder preferences, to identify the best alternative.  This process can be iterative or even inverted to identify the true optimal alternative. The results of our process are defensible predictions of the uncertain consequences of each decision alternative -- Risk Assessment -- and identification of the alternative that produces the best combination of consequences -- Risk Management. |risk assessment|earthquake risk|slope stability|soil mechanics|