What is a Fallback Plan?
The fallback plan is plan C: what you execute if the risk occurs and the primary response (the contingency plan) fails or proves insufficient. The ladder: response strategy → contingency plan (if the risk fires) → fallback plan (if the contingency fails).
Reserved for risks whose failure you can't absorb — you don't fallback-plan everything, just the ones where "the contingency didn't work" is an unsurvivable sentence.
Worked example
Risk: the customs broker may not clear the turbine in time. Contingency: pre-filed documentation with a second broker on retainer. Fallback, priced and ready: air-freight the two critical components separately at $340K and install them ahead of the main unit. The second broker also stumbles — the fallback executes, ugly and expensive and planned, and commissioning starts on schedule minus nothing.