About this workshop

One of the primary reasons given for not attempting to perform a State of the Art Quantitative Risk Assessment is that they are hard to do. No doubt, a State of the Art Quantitative Risk Assessment for a problem that deserves it does require some thinking, and as a result will require some math, and because every risk problem is unique, some unique coding. None of these is beyond anyone who should be working in the field, and we will in this session dispel those reasons for not performing a State of the Art Quantitative Risk Assessment. Plus, one advancement that we will discuss eliminates the source of many decision-making pitfalls, the application of decision maker values in the thinking, math, and code far too early in the process. This early application of decision maker values almost always happens due to using guesses. This advancement allows optimally objective, guess-free, quantitative risk assessments, to which the decision maker can then properly apply their values and make truly optimal decisions. (Sneak peak: we will also show how a State of the Art Quantitative Risk Assessment can be quicker, faster and much, much cheaper than a qualitative risk assessment.)

Topics covered by this workshop

Probability theory

Mark Powell

Mark Powell has practiced Risk Management for over 45 years in a wide variety of technical environments including defense, aerospace, energy, and commercial. His roles in these environments have included project manager, engineering manager, chief systems engineer, and research scientist. He has been sharing his hard won practical risk expertise by teaching risk management at the graduate level since 1998 at the University of Idaho, the University of Houston, Stevens Institute of Technology, and the University of Texas at Austin. He is an active member of Sigma Xi, ISBA, AIAA, INFORMS, and helped to found the Texas Gulf Coast Chapter of INCOSE in 1991. Mr. Powell has served INCOSE as Chair of the Risk Management Working Group, and as Assistant Director for Systems Engineering Processes. He has since 2002 been regularly invited to present risk management tutorials and seminars at INCOSE International Symposia, IEEE Conferences and Symposia, PMI Conferences, and for numerous other professional organizations. Mr. Powell has maintained an active engineering and management consulting practice in North America, Europe, and Asia since 1999.