Risk Drift

Risk Drift refers to the gradual and often unnoticed increase in risk levels over time as safety controls, procedures, or barriers slowly degrade or are bypassed during normal operations. It occurs when small deviations from intended safe practices become normalised without formal risk reassessment, often driven by production pressures or complacency.

Examples include:

• Maintenance intervals being informally extended to meet production targets
• PPE requirements becoming routinely relaxed in a specific work area
• Step-by-step checks in a permit-to-work process being routinely skipped because “it always works this way”

The concept of risk drift is widely used in HSEQ and critical risk management, particularly in high-hazard industries such as mining, oil & gas, and construction. It emphasises the need for ongoing monitoring of controls to prevent drift into failure.