Česká cesta

Safety
or Risk Management in Česká cesta

The experiential layer of the educational and developmental programmes inherently includes a certain level of risk. The risk stems not only from the environment itself (the nature) and/or the character of the activities (programmes including elements of sports) but they are also influenced by the state of the group, trainers’ or instructors’ qualification as well as quality of the used material.

We are aware of these factors, their mutual interconnection and situational variability. We do not burry our heads in the sand, on the contrary, we try to work with the risk as a natural component of the methods that we use. If we eliminated all the risk factors to create an absolutely safe environment for all the involved, we would deprive us of situations which are a valuable source of inspiration, learning and further development. Therefore we have chosen another direction: the way of knowing and managing the risk.

Our safety regulations which are formulated in the internal manual, are binding for staff of our company. These rules are by far not restricted only to realisation of risk activities; on the contrary, they cover the process of designing the whole programme, selection of the specific venue as well as logistics. Our rules are an extension of the minimal mandatory safety regulations of the CSAEL.

In case of sudden medical situations our trainers and instructors are trained in first aid – they have to attend practical medical seminars on a regular basis.

On purpose, we build up a company culture of reporting mistakes, not laying the blame on somebody else. There are systems of information flow concerning non-standard situations, so-called nearmiss reports, an annual internal safety report is published and regular workshops of risk management are organized for all company staff. However none of this would be possible without mutual trust between the company leaders and the pool of trainers – the trust is something we purposefully build and treat it as one of the basic pillars of our company culture. We also want to build similar trust relationship concerning accident prevention and safety of our programmes towards our clients.

Once in two years, there is a regular safety review in our company carried out by Outward Bound International; the outcome of such a review is a certificate stating our qualification to risk management. We have already offered advantages and know-how of such a review to our competition/colleagues in the CSAEL. In this way, we want to contribute to the development of our field actively and do not see the questions of safety and risk management as a tool of competition.

Outward Bound – Česká cesta, s.r.o. has a third party liability insurance (financial limit is CZK 5 million for one insurance event).

If a client is interested in an individual accident insurance for participants, we will be glad to arrange that, too.

We have learned from the few serious accidents and errors that had occurred in the history of our company (luckily, all had a good ending). What is more important, however, we continue to search for learning and prevention in the accidents that did not happen, but could have happened. Do you ask how? Do you have any other questions? Do not hesitate to ask, and contact us.

Our risk management with hyperbole! - watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXtp9hHka4w