London to Auckland

In my last post I suggested that you might get to hear from JD Letham about risk. JD says to pass on his regards to you all and tell you that with his writing skills, that would be too risky a proposition. So on that note I will now tell you what I know about it……………………………..there that was painless wasn’t it.

Well actually, I do know a little about it so here goes.

The Oxford dictionary defines risk as a noun; ‘The possibility that something unpleasant will happen’ and a verb; ’Expose to danger or loss’.

In the last post we learned that it’s risky to not follow a tall person if he suddenly runs off at high speed, and with tonight’s $27 million Lotto prize I couldn’t resist an investment in a ticket. Yes, that’s right, an investment, albeit a high risk investment. Yes sir. Risk is everywhere.

With both my job as a pilot and the London-Sydney event there is a great exposure to risk. It’s just the nature of what we are doing. We pilots get very good at sensing danger, analyzing the risks and mitigating them to the point where they become insignificant. We get better at this with time and training until it gets to the point that just about every eventuality has a preplanned action. For example, if an engine were to fail I would deal with it like I have a hundred times in training and a couple in real life. And if someone farts on the flight deck, I will smell it at least a minute before it’s released, put on an oxygen and smoke mask and then plan who to blame, decide on the consequences and silently plot revenge. I may also call the flight attendants up to take a drinks order if I’m feeling really mean.(This is very unlikely though. I rarely feel this mean)

With London-Sydney we are attempting to do the same. The procedure we are following is to identify every possible thing that we could have happen to us. We then look at:

· How likely is this to happen

· How do we stop it from happening

· What are the consequences if it still happens

· What can we do in advance to reduce these consequences

· What are our actions if it happens

The current London-Sydney document for this already covers two A3 sheets in small print and will only get bigger.

But it needs to be done as we are not keen on getting too many surprises on the event. And as you can imagine, any sponsors will want to make sure that we have the best chance of succeeding before they part with their hard earned money.

I reckon our two biggest risks are the weather and injury to the riders. We can mitigate both. With the weather we will have great systems in place for forecasting and a good weather team. With injury we can be as fit and strong as possible and we will have two backup riders. Piracy may be an issue for a few days but we will have procedures in place and if anything it’s getting more and more risky for the pirates with all those navy boats in the area. A few weeks ago a few extra stupid pirates actually attacked a French naval vessel by mistake. That should earn then a Darwin award. But enough about them.

That’s it for this post. The website now has a countdown timer on it and will shortly have a Twitter on it at www.twitter.com/jeremyburfoot

Cheers

Jeremy