Risky Business

I was always told the best way to remember your hazards from your risks is to consider the following, sharks are hazardous so going for a swim is risky business.

But why am I talking about risk?  After all it is something I am sure we all do our level best to minimize our contact with at all points, but why is that?  After all our industry is inherently risky, from the pests we deal with, to the products we use… So why do we shy from it? And why don’t we use it to our advantage?

The idea of risk-based pest management is hardly a new concept, but it is one that is poorly utilised, and even when it is employed we barely scratch the surface of what it is we can achieve with this hidden gem of a toolset.

Over the following pages I hope to present a foundation to be built upon in the form of a four-step guide to building a strategy based around making risk work for you.

The question you have to ask yourself, is not “what is the cost of pest management plan?” but rather, “what is the risk of not having a pest management plan?”

Step One – Initiate

Survey and Appraise.

Step one should focus on identifying pests and establishing boundaries.  Undertake a thorough survey for pests making sure to include provisions for the potential for pest ingress in the future.  By understanding and recording the presence of and the potential for pests you are able to determine the likelihood of infestations occurring.  Pay special attention to areas immediately surrounding the site which may act as pest reservoirs and will therefore increase the risk of perpetual pest recruitment.

Next look to the site itself and document the type of activities which are being undertaken.  The severity of pests inside a building or business will largely depend on the use of that building.  The severity of the risk from pests in a food manufacturing site will likely be high, where the severity from pests around a carpark are likely to be much lower.

Next break the site into areas dependant on what impact those pests are likely to have if they were to establish an infestation in those areas.

The interaction between these three components should give you both a measure of what your boundaries are, and what your action potential should be.  For example, the likelihood of pigeons in the carpark might be high, the severity of having pigeons on the site in general is moderate, but the impact of having them in the carpark is low, therefore the action potential may therefore be acceptable.  However, the presence of mice in an office kitchen, although unlikely to occur will have a significant severity and impact rating, resulting in a greater action potential leading to immediate action.

Step Two – Establish

Environmental Risk and Reward.

After you have determined the presence of, or potential for, pests on a site you will need to expand your survey to include an Environmental Risk Assessment to determine what is the maximum level of intervention appropriate to the site.  Currently this is a practise only undertaken for rodent control, but realistically can (and should) be applied to any control program.

Document all animals evidenced on and around the site and rationalise how they might be affected by any future treatments.

Consider the speed with which treatments need to be undertaken, after all pests may well have significant impacts on the environment themselves.  Weigh up whether it would it be better to engage with an intense yet brief control strategy, or is there freedom to allow for a more sedate or sustained approach?

Ultimately there must always be a balance between having the maximum impact, for the minimal cost.

The information gleamed from Step One can be used in direct conjunction with the Environmental Risks outlined in Step Two.  The interplay between these two observations will tell you on the Risk Hierarchy what is the minimal effective position when controlling an active population, as well as limiting what the maximum level of risk should be with our choice in tools and strategy.

Step Three –  Determine

Implement the appropriate response, tactics, and strategy.

A strategy should not be thought of as a single action or process, but as a series of tactics stacked together allowing the benefits of each to support the weaknesses of the others.

By applying a process of overlapping escalating tactics any strategy can be given the best chance at both short term control and long term management.

Information generated from Step One and Two can use used to devise these tactics and break them down into discrete phases that can be implemented.  It is important to note that although a strategy might apply to an entire site, the tactics for control may vary significantly from area to area around the site.  Escalation to chemical intervention may well be prudent early on, on one section of site, but on another section the same results might be achieved with the use of traps or other physical control methods. 

At this point as well as using your risk matrix to both determine intervention limits and site boundaries, it can be used for a third critical function, to determine the visit frequencies required to ensure you continued command over the site.

Step four – Evaluate

Demonstrate success (or failure) through monitoring and continual assessment.

Winston Churchill once said, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”

This is particularly true when dealing with pests.  Many a job has been lost due to a strategy failing to deliver the desired results, and some jobs have even been lost when a strategy was so effective the teams implementing it were then deemed unnecessary because “there are no more pests”.

In both cases a program of monitoring and assessment can be the answer.

Monitoring and assessment can serve three primary functions.

• Non-toxic monitoring can act as an early warning system, allowing for a reduction in time to action, providing the opportunity for a swift response to early infestations.
• Active assessment of ongoing treatments allows the PMO to gauge which tactics have provided greatest impacts and those that have had the least impact, so that in future infestations these tactics can be better utilised or modified.
• Finally continual assessment over the year gives an element of future proofing sites, preparing for seasonal trends in pest ingress.  Additionally it give a metric by which to demonstrate success, showing how that month on month, or year on year, the effects of the PMO teams are maintaining a site which is kept within those user defined and agreed levels of risk and acceptability.

Dealing with uncertainty.

That’s right, there’s even risk in your assumption of risk.  Much of this strategy building will be in part a subjective series of observations being placed into an inherently objective framework, therefore there needs to be an element of lee way applied. When devising risk-based strategies remember to give breathing space to allow for the dynamic nature of both pests, and our detection of them.  Do not give up or withdraw from the process if success is not immediate, instead use this feedback to modify and augment your strategy and its development.  With each revision and update, this basic model will adapt to your style and skillsets, becoming more robust, reliable and personalised with each refinement.