Dubai’s RTA: Applying State-of-the-
Art Risk Management to a Transport
Infrastructure
As director of safety, risk, regulation and planning for Dubai UAE’s Roads and Transport
Authority (RTA), Amair Saleem has been at the center of applying a sophisticated and
integrated risk management system across Dubai's transportation infrastructure. His
efforts at the RTA were recently recognized by the Institute of Risk Management, which
named him the 2015 Global Risk Management Professional of the Year. Here, Mr.
Saleem discusses how he has applied risk management processes and oversight to a
number of complex systems with Fadi Sidani, a partner specializing in Enterprise Risk
Services at Deloitte & Touche Middle East.
Fadi Sidani: What were some of the risk management practices that may have
contributed to you being named Risk Management Professional of the Year by the
Institute of Risk Management?
Amair Saleem
Amair Saleem: First, | believe they were impressed by the size of RTA’s operation,
When people think of transport operators, they might think of a metro operator or bus
operator, But the Dubai RTA oversees all surface public transportation, which includes a
metro system, a tram system, buses and taxis. In addition, it oversees road
construction, water transport and transport licensing service. We have over a million
passenger journeys a day, which is significant considering Dubai's population ofapproximately 2.2 million. In addition, the RTA is not only involved in the construction of
transport, but also in the operation of varied services for the community,
Another reason | think | received the award is that we are functioning at far broader
‘scope and not at a purely operational risk environment level. We have put risk
management as the RTA’s centralized engine to support management systems of the
transport networks. To name but a few we have an asset management system, a
project management system, a quality system, a health and safety system, a security
system, a fraud system and an audit system. Risk management sits at the nexus or the
hub of all of that and drives these other processes. If we don’t have a risk management
system working effectively at the corporate level, the strategic level and the operation
level, the RTA would be challenged. | think that’s why the Senior Management of RTA
has put so much focus on developing a robust system that ties these aspects together
and developing a risk culture.
Fadi Sidani: How do you oversee risk management across the varied transportation
systems?
Amair Saleem: At a project level, we have a centralized project risk register. Depending
‘on where the project is and the significance of the issue, we determine the depth at
which we investigate a risk issue. | can use an example involving our railway systems.
Although we have a corporate or enterprise risk management system, for something as
ctitical as the rail system which includes a high degree of automation, it is important to
understand the Crisis and Business Impact from the technology. This allows us to get
operations up and running quickly should an issue arise. It also allows us to delve much
deeper into the operational component of the system and to monitor more on a real-time
basis than we could without that level of automation. The risk system also allows us to
monitor at the level of component failure, such as subsystem failure, and how that
would impact the overall system. From there we can see what may have caused a
particular failure and what it would take for us to restore the service, from a business
continuity perspective.
The basis of what | call the DNA for our approach to risk management is to combine
project risk, operational risk and strategic risk together into one system. Wefundamentally started with a project risk-based organization. So there was a level of risk
management already ongoing, but then we added a lot more than just linking those
separate systems together on the operational side. When you build a big transportation
system, you can mitigate the majority of those risks from your design output and your
manufacturing output, but you also will likely have residual operational risks. And those
residual risks you need to mitigate in operations and particularly operation procedures
that need to be monitored and addressed through software and other technological
means.
Fadi Sidani: What were some of the challenges in implementing the risk management
program as you envisioned it and what helped guide your decisions?
Amair Saleem: The learning curve was huge, especially the people element, involving
operators and other employees. When you're talking about so many employees and 40
departments and the diversity of services—from an operational rail agency type service
to licensing and issuing of driving licenses— the distance and the scope of the risk
management program are quite phenomenal. We felt that the people who could best
identify the risks, considering the diversity of services, were those at the ground level,
basically the department directors and department managers
We held risk workshops with every department, and we added awareness sessions with
junior management and senior management and even at the board level. And we got
everyone, at all levels of the system, to start to think about risk in a direct way as how it
influences their own operations, their projects and their reputation. That level of
engagement helped smooth the transition to the new risk management system.
Because the risk management program is such a highly integrated system we also
recognized that if we followed a typical process—doing our initial risk assessment,
providing initial risk registers, and providing an all-working risk management system—
the department directors and managers probably would have been reluctant to interact
with it.We decided to engage those employees early on using workshops and other vehicles,
which presented challenges because we have about 25 to 30 different nationalities, with
people from highly developed environments as well as many from less developed
areas. So it was important to approach the project from a cultural perspective, including
many different languages, as well as from a technical perspective. One of the key
accomplishments was getting everyone to a common language of risk management at
the organization,
Fadi Sidani: Looking forward, what's next in terms of your plans for the RTA and risk
management efforts?
Amair Saleem: We have a huge number of projects coming online because the Emirate
of Dubai won the rights to host the World Expo 2020—this will enhance the scope of
risk management in RTA.
We recently announced that we will be extending our metro line by another 15
kilometers. We're looking at extending our tram line as well, and we're expanding our
transportation network, building new bridges and new roads. Alll of that project activity
will be ongoing and represents a huge effort. At the same time, we're operational. So
we're trying to balance what we have to do from the project sense while trying to
balance the operational requirements, as well as the strategic corporate requirements.
We also are focusing on innovation. For example, we have set up an innovation
laboratory at Dubai Tram facilities. We're also looking at smart applications and
processes to update our management and enterprise risk management systems, and
RTA now provides 173 services through its nine smart applications. One of these smart
application will enable staff members to raise a risk issue, which then gets moved into a
central database. As guided by the Director General of RTA, innovation has been a big
part of our plan for the RTA for some time, and our focus on innovation will play an even
more important role as the transport authority grows in size and complexity
Editor's note: This article is part of an ongoing series of interviews with CEOs, CFOs
and other executives. Mr. Saleem’s participation in this article is solely for educationalpurposes based on his knowledge of the subject, and the views expressed by him are
solely his own. This artiole should not be deemed or construed to be for the purpose of
soliciting business for Dubai UAE's Roads and Transport Authority, nor does Deloitte
advocate or endorse the services or products provided by Dubai UAE’s Roads and
Transport Authority.