🚧 When risk avoidance becomes a blockade 🚧 What happens when a safety mindset goes beyond all reasonable measure? In Bielefeld, a new procedure was recently introduced at the municipal recycling centers: so-called “service stops.” To carry out compacting work on a single waste container, the entire recycling yard is simply closed off. All visitors have to leave the site before a wheel loader is allowed to carry out a brief task. Afterward, the whole rush starts all over again. The result: queues with waiting times of an hour or more, just to drop off ordinary waste. Citizens lose their time, frustration rises, and with it the risk that waste gets disposed of illegally. Yet there would be solutions: 👉 Cordoning off only the affected container 👉 Compacting with an integrated press 👉 Safety zones instead of a total closure Risk management doesn't mean blockade, it means responsible weighing of trade-offs. Anyone who wants to avoid every conceivable contingency paralyzes processes, creates inefficiencies, and ultimately endangers acceptance and participation. 🔄 Better than avoiding: managing risks. #RiskManagement #PublicAdministration #ProcessOptimization #Bielefeld #Efficiency #ServiceStops #Bureaucracy #DysfunctionalSafetyThinking
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