To understand the role Eamonn Cunningham plays within the Westfield Group's global operations as the chief risk officer, group Chief Financial Officer Peter Allen says it's helpful to think of the company as a Formula 1 race car.

“The best piece of equipment you can have in a race car is a good set of brakes,” Mr. Allen said. “They allow you to brake later as you enter into the turns and accelerate out of them earlier, thereby allowing you to retain more of your momentum.”

In that context, Mr. Allen described Mr. Cunningham — and more specifically, the comprehensive risk management program Mr. Cunningham has implemented during his 27-year career at Westfield — as the best brakes money can buy.

“What he's doing is making sure that as an operating business, we've got the things in place that ensure that our operational leaders are still the drivers in terms of their business,” Mr. Allen said. “They're still able to grow and innovate as quickly as they can, but without jeopardizing the company or taking an undue risk.”

The evolution of Westfield's risk management strategy under Mr. Cunningham's leadership has been a gradual process, marked by the development and implementation of several innovative policies and procedures designed to reinforce the core principle that the task of minimizing the company's exposure to potential losses extends to every Westfield employee.

“We were rapidly waking up to the notion that risk is owned by everyone in the organization, and that we needed a way to get everyone to begin playing their part,” Mr. Cunningham said.

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In 1995, at Mr. Cunningham's suggestion, Westfield began designating risk management coordinators at each of its Australian mall properties and construction projects to take on primary administration of all risk-related matters within their respective locations.

“Our mall managers and our project managers ultimately bear responsibility for the risks at their specific properties, but we understood the pressures and the limited time those individuals have, so we knew that each one of them needed a good risk lieutenant,” Mr. Cunningham said. “At the time we introduced it, I made a point of going out to each and every mall in our Australian portfolio and talking to the local staffs about exactly what this program was intended to do, because it was quite a change for the company.”

The program was later expanded to include all of Westfield's properties and development projects worldwide. The company estimates that their addition to its management structure has significantly reduced loss incidents and claims costs over time, in some locations by as much as 30%.

“One of the ways we went about it was telling people that regardless of their job function, they need to consistently ask themselves the "what if' question,” Mr. Cunningham said. “If you do that, and you're at all uncomfortable with the answer, then you owe it to yourself and the organization to do something about it.”

Another element of Westfield's field-level risk management strategy that has proven effective in both mitigating casualty claims and preserving the company's reputation with its patrons is the introduction of follow-up phone calls to each shopping center's incident management protocols.

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“A lot of times, that approach alleviates the risk of a person going to a lawyer if there's been a slip-and-fall incident, because they've seen that Westfield cares and they're appreciative that we took the time to follow up with them,” said Donna Blackley, risk management coordinator at the Westfield Garden State Plaza shopping center in Paramus, N.J. “By following up with these individuals, last year alone I was able to handle 77 (potential and activated) claims in-house rather than sending them out to our third-party administrator. If we hadn't been able to nip those claims in the bud, we definitely would have had higher costs in paying out those claims.”

At a global level, Mr. Cunningham said he's particularly proud of his role in formalizing an enterprise-wide adoption of business continuity planning, including the installation of crisis management teams at each of its four regional headquarters.

“We needed to ensure that each individual unit of Westfield has a business continuity management system in place that can identify internal and external influences that might potentially derail it from meeting its objectives,” Mr. Cunningham said.

While securing the capital investments necessary to implement the range of programs and procedures was by no means easy, Mr. Cunningham said he'd be hard-pressed to recall an instance in which a program he genuinely thought would benefit Westfield's broader operations eventually was not adopted.

“None of this was done in a vacuum, and I'm fortunate to work for a company that is very focused on ensuring that we're doing all we can to preserve brand value, and that sees the innate value in programs like these,” Mr. Cunningham said. “They look at what needs to be done, and only after that do they consider the cost of what those measures will be, rather than the other way around.”

“We've increased our risk management capabilities because we believe, as a company, that we're getting a lot of value out of those investments. You can't necessarily track that value day-to-day, but you certainly see it when an issue or loss event does come up,” Mr. Allen said.