PIPES Community Recap: How Capital Planners Use Risk Manager to Balance Cost, Risk, and Strategy
In our latest PIPES Community webinar, IFS Copperleaf® introduced Risk Manager, a powerful new capability designed to bring structure, alignment, and strategic foresight to enterprise-wide risk management. Built through the Copperleaf Labs model—with deep input from clients across our community—Risk Manager helps critical infrastructure organizations shift from fragmented risk awareness to consistent, value-based risk action.
Creating a Common Language for Risk Across the Enterprise
The conversation opened with a challenge familiar to many in the room: risk is often defined, tracked, and mitigated differently depending on the role. Field operators may identify real-time threats like equipment degradation or environmental exposure. Risk managers focus on triage and oversight, often overwhelmed by inconsistent data. Strategic planners are trying to align today’s risk mitigation with long-term investment and resilience goals. And IT managers bring yet another lens—concerned with cyber threats and system resilience. Risk Manager responds to this diversity with a centralized solution that creates a common language for risk—enabling clarity, consistency, and constancy across the organization. As Jay Agrawal, Program Manager at IFS Copperleaf, explained during the session, “Risk means something different depending on your role—and that’s one of the key challenges Risk Manager was designed to solve.”
By offering configurable lifecycle stages, score-based prioritization using the Copperleaf® Value Framework, and seamless integration with Copperleaf Portfolio™ and Copperleaf Asset™, the platform delivers full traceability—from the moment a risk is identified to the investments made to address it. The goal is not just to catalogue risks, but to connect them directly to strategic decisions and capital outcomes.
Transforming Risk Into Smarter Business Decisions
The live demo brought these concepts to life through a relatable example: a deteriorating building posing risks to operations, safety, and service continuity. Viewers were shown how Risk Manager allows organizations to log the risk, link it to specific assets like control rooms or engines, assess its economic and strategic impact, and explore mitigation investments directly within their planning environment. This is where the integration becomes powerful: risks become visible, quantifiable, and actionable—no longer living in spreadsheets or disconnected systems. The result is a shared, transparent view of what’s at stake, who owns it, and how it’s being addressed.
Risk Manager not only helps reduce exposure and improve compliance—it enables better business decisions. It empowers teams to prioritize high-value risks, direct funding where it matters most, and demonstrate defensibility to stakeholders, regulators, and boards. As Jay summarized, “Risk governance isn’t just about avoiding problems. It’s about making smarter decisions that protect outcomes and build trust.
Turning Risk Into a Strategic Lever for Value
Whether your goal is to improve regulatory defensibility, align capital planning to enterprise strategy, or simply gain better visibility into where risks are and how they evolve—Risk Manager offers an elegant, deeply integrated solution. It turns risk from a liability into a lever for performance, accountability, and long-term value.