CS35C - Concurrent Session 35C: A Decade of RIDM: Lessons Learned from the First Ten Years of Modern Risk Management Practices at BIA

Abstract Description: In January 2015 FEMA and the Interagency Committee on Dam Safety (ICODS) published the Federal Guidelines for Dam Safety Risk Management which provided guidance for the implementation of risk-informed decision making within Federal dam safety programs. Later that year, the Bureau of Indian Affairs Safety of Dams (SOD) Program formally adopted Risk Informed Decision Making (RIDM) as its core management practice for evaluating the safety of dams, identifying needed risk reduction measures, and prioritizing actions and resources throughout its inventory of more than 140 high hazard potential dams. In the time since, risk considerations have come to inform all virtually all aspects of SOD activities and provide a measure of commonality that helps integrate the routine and non-routine actions carried out by the SOD Program.

The dams managed by SOD form an important part of the water resources infrastructure for many Tribes and reservations throughout the United States, and the broader inventory is comprised of many dam types, sizes, and features. The vast majority of these dams were built more than sixty years ago, and limited maintenance activities over the years resulted in a substantial backlog of deferred maintenance needs. With limited financial and staffing resources to manage a large inventory of dams needing repair and rehabilitation, addressing these needs required something of an all-hands-on-deck strategy to enable to the SOD Program to find the most effective and efficient means available for prioritizing risk management activities. Through close collaboration with many thought leaders and risk-management pioneers from the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), BIA adopted a version of the RIDM approach used by BOR and incorporated the Dam Safety Priority Rating (DSPR) system. This provided the SOD Program with an exceptional foundation for a RIDM program, however effective implementation required adaptations for scalability and other aspects of BIA’s portfolio, including unique stake holder interests, performance histories, and applications in predominantly rural/remote areas. In more recent years, the SOD Program has worked with an extensive group of Federal agency partners and highly skilled engineering consultants to support and refine these RIDM efforts.

This presentation will briefly summarize relevant background information and will largely focus on lessons learned from the development and implementation of this RIDM program. Topics will include: scalability, pragmatic application, staffing, training, resource prioritization, risks over time, portfolio risk, stakeholder outreach, and risk communication. A few examples of RIDM practices are presented.