Operational Risk Assessment

Andi Lamprecht ·2026-05-11· 9 min read· Draft

Decision Log & Proposed Next Steps

Importance of Solving the Problem Now

Today, Users complete operational risk assessments for each Operational Site by submitting requests through an external service management solution, while Authorizers manually review and approve these requests outside the Uncrew system. This reliance on external tools creates slow, fragmented workflows and poor visibility into mission readiness, particularly for specific operational sites.

Instead, Users will initiate, complete, and submit all ORA and PRAFR assessments directly inside Uncrew for each Operational Site. Authorizers will review, approve, or request changes within Uncrew, leveraging a standardized, in-platform approval workflow that uses Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and risk-score-based routing to ensure clarity, consistency, and timely decisions before mission launch.

This unified behavioral change represents the first milestone toward a complete, integrated Risk Assessment solution within Uncrew, establishing the foundation for robust operational risk governance across all sites.

Why Should the Business Pursue This?

DroneUp must equip operators and their Operational Site teams with tools within Uncrew that fully support all safety and risk procedures required for our 135 certification. These processes, including assessment completion and approval, must be part of the core Uncrew product, not third-party software requiring extra training and licenses. By bringing this logic into the platform, we establish product-delivered compliance, ensuring consistency and objective evaluation through automated risk scoring and controlled access.

How Does This Align with DroneUp’s Business Goals?

DroneUp has a 90-day goal to Commercialize Uncrew for Operators, supporting delivery and inspection use cases in an agency model. Agents can only be onboarded if the Risk Assessment can be completed and Safety and Compliance protocols can be seamlessly delivered. Pursuing this integrated solution is a hard requirement for achieving the commercial goal, as it establishes the necessary governance structure — including site-level access control — required to scale the agency model compliantly.

Concept

The overall concept is to deliver a complete Risk Assessment Framework built on a configuration-driven architecture. This framework enables tools like Form Builder and Workflow Engine to provide Operators with the capability to define and customize Risk Assessment forms and integrate them into workflows. The overall outcome of this concept is to ensure we can embed operational and safety management protocols directly into the product, so that the agents can make use of this within their operations to stay compliant with the operations certification.

How Does This Align with DroneUp’s Product Vision?

Building a set of tools that allows an Operator to build a customized Safety Management System (SMS), as per their documented process, allows the Operator/Agent model to be delivered completely inside the Uncrew product ecosystem. It ensures that every operator and agent is always provided with tools that enable their teams to remain compliant, without the use of third-party toolsets. This provides the required traceability and data when requested by authorities, demonstrating compliance to the configurations they have been approved for.

What Product Milestone Does This Align With?

This aligns with the Operator/Agent model, which is a prerequisite for Uncrew’s commercialization. We cannot deliver a product that requires additional tools and processes outside of our ecosystem. We must deliver the foundational toolset that allows agents to be modeled under an Operator, who can define and deliver compliance under an approved certification, using site-level governance and configurable safety protocols managed entirely within Uncrew.

Target Audience(s)

Compliance, Operations

Approach

The approach to delivering the strategic Risk Assessment Framework is grounded in providing immediate, impactful results. We will focus our current efforts on three core milestones that deliver a rapid replacement for the existing ORA and PRAFR forms and approval flow. By prioritizing this replacement, we achieve an immediate, measurable impact and realize efficiency gains sooner. We will execute these goals sequentially, focusing first on Milestone 1, then moving to Milestone 2, and concluding with Milestone 3. The data and learning gained from delivering these initial milestones will be critical in transforming our first deliverable into the complete and comprehensive Risk Assessment Framework.

Milestone 1: Foundational Engine, Scoring, and Submission

This milestone represents the transition from external service management to a core product capability. It is delivered by building a configuration-driven architecture that precisely mirrors the current Operational Risk Assessment (ORA) and Flight Risk Assessment (FRAR) processes, forms, and logic.

Delivery Approach (The “How”)

Milestone 1 will be delivered through a configuration-driven approach, where the implementation focuses on making the system extensible:

• Configuration via JSON: The system will use JSON configuration files to define the form schemas, fields, and existing scoring logic. This proves the architectural path toward a future Form Builder UI.
• Workflow via Scripted Logic: The workflow transitions (e.g., Draft → Submitted → Needs Approval) will be managed by Scripted Workflow Logic. This logic will replicate the existing state transitions exactly, while laying the foundation for a future, more complex workflow engine.

Key Deliverables

Milestone 2: Notifications and Task Management

This milestone is dedicated to implementing the necessary communication features to keep the risk assessment process moving efficiently between the Requestor and the Approver, minimizing delays caused by missed communication.

Key Objectives

The central goal of Milestone 2 is to ensure that Uncrew is the sole system responsible for tracking, triggering, and managing the approval flow, regardless of the user’s current platform activity. This explicitly means we will not rely on external tools (like JIRA Service Management issues) to track the state or prompt actions in the approval workflow.

The objective is to allow users to know they are required to act, or have received an approval/rejection, without having to be logged into the Uncrew system.

Key Deliverables

Milestone 3: Mission Execution Governance Gate

This milestone is critical for closing the compliance loop, ensuring that the integrity of the completed risk assessment directly influences operational feasibility. The focus is on making the approved ORA/PFRAR status a mandatory prerequisite for advancing a mission to the “ready” or “launch” state.

Key Objectives

The central objective is to transform the risk assessment from a necessary administrative step into an unbreakable governance gate that controls mission execution. This proves that the integrated solution delivers mission readiness assurance.

Key Deliverables

By delivering these three milestones, we achieve an impactful change today that perfectly aligns with the overall vision for the Risk Assessment Framework. We move beyond simply addressing a compliance gap: Milestone 1 establishes the necessary configuration-driven architecture to eventually support the Form Builder, while Milestones 2 and 3 deliver immediate, tangible benefits — eliminating dependency on external tools, forcing workflow velocity, and mandating compliance before launch. This phased delivery ensures we realize critical governance and efficiency improvements now while architecturally enabling the future of a fully operator-managed SMS system within the Uncrew product.

What FAA-Controlled Documents Will Be Affected?