Risk Management
QDMS Now assesses risk in four places, and they are deliberately four modules rather than one screen with a dropdown:
| Module | Assesses | Scored on |
|---|---|---|
| Occupational Health & Safety | What could harm a person at work | Probability × frequency × severity |
| Asset Risk | What an information asset is worth | Confidentiality, integrity, availability |
| Environmental | What a process does to the environment | Severity × probability × legal status |
| Information Security | What could happen to information | Probability × impact on C, I and A |
They are separate because the questions are separate. A safety risk asks how often somebody is exposed; an environmental aspect asks whether a legal limit applies; a security risk asks three impact questions instead of one. Merging them would mean one scoring screen carrying every dimension any standard has ever asked for, with most of it hidden most of the time.
The one pattern all four share
Learning one module teaches you most of the next three.
The main form is the register. Records are never opened loose — they belong to a main form (an asset group in Asset Risk) that owns two things the records underneath cannot decide for themselves: the code template that numbers them, and the authorization matrix saying who may do what in it.
The authorization matrix is per register, not per record. Rows accept users, roles, user groups, positions and organization units, so access follows the organization rather than a list of names. It is read live on every request and never copied onto a record — changing the matrix takes effect immediately on everything under the register.
Scoring is formula-driven and stored, not recomputed. Each module has its own scoring lists and its own formula tokens. The result is written onto the record when it is saved, so rewriting a formula next year does not silently move the score of an assessment already made and approved.
Definitions are lists you curate. Every definition screen ships with Excel export, Excel import and bulk delete, so a scale or a catalogue can be loaded from a spreadsheet rather than typed row by row.
Revisions keep the code and start a new round. Re-assessing is not editing. A revision is a new record carrying the same code with the revision number raised, and the previous round steps down the moment the revision is opened — so a register shows one row per code. Abandoning a revision puts the previous round back in force.
There is no Save button on a record being worked on. A record in a flow is somebody's open task, and the way out of it is to say what happens next. Every write goes through the flow's own actions, which save and move in the same call.
Where the four modules differ
| OHS | Asset Risk | Environmental | Information Security | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Register | Risk main form, one per hazard class | Asset group | Main form, covers BPM processes | Risk main form |
| Scoring passes | Two — before and after measures | One — an asset's value | One | Two — initial and residual |
| Formula tiers | Two: score → band | Two: score → band | Two: score → band | Three: impact → risk → band |
| Measures | Risk actions | None — improvement is raised as a security risk | Environmental actions | Risk actions |
| Distinctive part | The before/after gap | One assessment in force per asset | The process link and significance | The Statement of Applicability |
How the modules connect
- Asset Risk feeds Information Security. A security risk can link to an asset risk assessment and inherit its confidentiality, integrity and availability ratings plus the asset value. It does not have to: Information Security also links straight to an asset, and works with Asset Risk absent altogether.
- Environmental links to processes. An environmental record names the business process whose activity produces the aspect.
- Risks raise CAPAs. A safety or security risk can have corrective actions opened against it, and the risk does not walk on while one is still open.
If you are rolling out more than one of these modules, define the scoring scales first and the formulas second, before anybody opens a record. Both are stored onto records as they are saved, so changing them later leaves you with two populations of records scored on different rules — legible, but not comparable.