Atkins Breakfast Briefing (19/09/07)
Risk Management meets Portfolio Planning – Ensuring Value for Money
The latest in our well-regarded series of Breakfast Briefings took place in London on the 20th September. Senior managers from a wide range of private and public sector organisations gathered at the Royal Horticultural Halls to enjoy a tasty breakfast and listen to an interesting new application for a tried and tested project management technique.
Peter Wood gently introduced the audience to the complexities of Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) based on 'Monte Carlo' simulation. By building up from a simple example - his journey to work - Peter managed to explain how any elements in a plan may be assigned a degree of uncertainty or tolerance. These tolerances can then be used in a simulation to generate a set of results that describe the likelihood to the overall outcome being achieved. Peter used case studies collected over many years experience to bring the tool to life and describe the power of this technique.
Nigel Stock then provided a simplified introduction to Corporate Portfolio Management (CPM) by building up the inputs and outputs that this executive management function needs. He focussed on the tricky issue of ensuring that investment portfolios are achievable - so that best value for money is derived from an organisation's investment budget. The inputs to the CPM function are subject to uncertainty and Nigel went on to show how the QRA techniques could be used to generate rich management information on the achievability of a sample portfolio. The value of sensitivity analysis was illustrated to show how the technique can be used to identify useful management strategies to improve the likelihood of programmes delivering in line with expectations.
Atkins offers a range of risk management and corporate portfolio management services to complement its programme management based consultancy capability.
Further information and explanation please contact Melody Laidlaw by email or telephone: 020 7121 2786.