Posted on Jun 13, 2023
1LT Engineer Officer
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Det cord charges on urban targets.
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Responses: 1
CSM William Everroad
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*WARNING* Lecture inbound for the good of the group
1LT (Join to see) Army Risk Management is a deliberate process that must be executed each time risk is assessed for a given activity. The person who signs the assessment is certifying that they have analyzed the activity, its risks, established appropriate controls, and identified people to administer the controls.

Shortcutting this process by utilizing pre-made templates or copying past risk assessments defeats the purpose of the risk analysis process and undermines risk management.

I understand some leaders have difficulty knowing where to start or reticent because they feel they may miss something. However, this is a skill that develops over time and feedback from the risk assumption authority refines the risk assessment and build expertise.

I also understand that some leaders ask for past assessments to "check their work", provide a starting point, or simply to do the heavy lift of the common risks associated with a given activity. To be a little helpful, some common risks associated with Urban Demo:

Environment (tripping, wildlife, heat/cold)
Noise: standoff, earplugs
Explosive hazard: Implement/enforce SDZ control area (EP guard, pre inspection of the SDZ), SO tracks count of personal inside SDZ at all times/ FPNCO verifies count of personal on the breach point before SO authorizes breach.
Unintentional Detonation: Breacher, SO or firing point NCO controls initiators or no caps in charges until emplacement and under supervision of Breacher, SO or firing point NCO and only after personal count its verifired.
Ricochet: PPE, standoff, EP guard: only authorized people in the SDZ
Unintentional/unauthorized increase to SDZ: limit surface NEW limit / implement protective works
Chemical contamination: don't eat the explosive materials safety brief, PPE

You can get fancy and list risks and controls for if the charge is displaced from the emplacement point (i.e. falls of the door or wall), but a lot of that will come from your FPNCO or Safety NCOIC. You can get extra fancy and find out how high the water table is and work in a line of limits to subsurface detonations.

Pending your questions, this concludes the lecture.
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1LT Engineer Officer
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CSM Everroad,

Thank you very much for your response. I appreciate the feedback and agree with the importance of the deliberate risk management process. As an M-Day Guardsmen, I have been caught in a few situations between drills where an AGR relays a task with a short suspense. It can be very difficult to transition my mindset from that of my civilian career and events to a mindset of the Army, especially when assigned to run a Demo range on the first day to a new unit. I had no intentions of using someone else's DRAW as a cookie cutter solution for a deliberate process, but rather as a tool to get my mind transitioned and to ensure that I don't fail to identify any risks.

Moving forward, I will be more deliberate about identifying the implied tasks for scheduled training events and anticipate their mid-drill suspense in order to give myself ample time to carry out the full and deliberate process.

Respectfully,
1LT Webb
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CSM William Everroad
CSM William Everroad
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1LT (Join to see) - Completely understandable. I made no assumptions about what you needed the template for, and if I still had one somewhere, I would have emailed it to you for sure.

My response above is pretty automatic whenever I hear a leader ask for a DRAW. After the "chiding", I typically sit down and help them through the DRA from the ground up.
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1LT Engineer Officer
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CSM William Everroad I believe that is an excellent approach!

We implemented the mitigation measures and the range was conducted safely, despite being very heavily lopsided with non-12B soldiers. From in, we also learned a few things that will be included for future range DRAWs.

Thanks
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