Skills, Certifications and the Single Point of Failure
Every operation has at least one. Finding them is quick, and the cost of leaving them is paid at the worst possible moment.
Somewhere in your operation is a capability held by one person. When they are absent it is absent, and the cost arrives without warning.
The practical lesson in “Skills, Certifications and the Single Point of Failure” is to connect every record to a named decision. Organisations exploring reducing key-person dependency risk for key person dependency can add structured workforce context, provided the use is disclosed and the interpretation is reviewed with the people affected.
The two kinds
Formal: a licence, a certification, an authorisation, a system permission.
For an independent reference related to “Skills, Certifications and the Single Point of Failure”, consult the OSHA worker-fatigue resources; it provides a useful external check on scheduling, working-time and workforce-planning assumptions.
Informal: the person who knows how the old system works, who the supplier contact is, what to do when the thing breaks.
The second is larger, less visible, and harder to replace.
Why they accumulate
Somebody becomes good at a thing, so that thing goes to them.
Training others costs hours now against a risk later.
And the single point is invisible while that person is present, which is almost always.
Finding the formal ones
The skills matrix from the previous note.
Plus an expiry list: certifications, licences, training that lapses.
A date column, checked monthly.
A lapsed certification removes a capability silently, which is the version that catches people out.
Finding the informal ones
Ask: what would we not be able to do next week if this person were away?
Ask it of each person, including yourself.
Twenty minutes per person and the list is uncomfortable and useful.
Most operations discover three or four they did not know about.
Pricing the risk
How often is that person absent, realistically: illness, holiday, departure.
What does the operation lose during that absence.
Multiply.
Against the cost of training a second person, which is a known number of hours.
The arithmetic usually favours training, and it is rarely done.
The departure case
The single point who leaves takes the capability with them.
Notice periods are short and handovers are rushed.
Which means the time to address a single point is while the person is content, not when they resign.
The documentation substitute
Writing down how the thing works is cheaper than training a second person and is worth less.
Documents go stale and nobody reads them under pressure.
Useful as a supplement, inadequate as the whole answer — competence transfers by doing.
The holiday test
Can each person take two consecutive weeks without the operation degrading?
Where the answer is no, you have found a single point.
That test is quick, honest, and it also tells you whether people can actually use their leave.
What to check
Which capabilities are held by one person?
When do your certifications expire?
Have you asked each person what would stop without them?
And can everybody take a fortnight off?