Broadleaf is still at work!

The Broadleaf team works from home offices, so we are facing little internal disruption to our work from the current coronavirus crisis.

We remain available by telephone and email, but we’ve adjusted our face-to-face interactions with our friends and clients. We have adapted our ways of working to fit in with the new business environment in which we must all operate.

Contact us to discuss any requirements for matters that require attention, or for special requirements arising from the coronavirus crisis.

Advisory services

Most of our advisory activities can be conducted remotely, with essential discussions held by telephone or videoconference.

This covers much of our work in reviewing frameworks and processes, recommending improvements to existing ways of working, or developing new approaches, for:

• Enterprise risk management
• Project risk management
• Assurance planning
• Learning lessons (root cause analysis)
• Other topics associated with understanding and managing uncertainty.

It also applies to quantitative modelling of uncertainty, including developing quantitative models and conducting peer reviews of existing models.

Over the past few weeks we have worked remotely with several clients on topics as diverse as:

• Upgrading a corporate risk management framework and associated processes, to develop a single, agreed approach to risk management across a large and geographically-dispersed business
• Reviewing quantitative models of project cost and schedule to support stage gate approval processes.

Workshop activities

In normal circumstances, collaboration across a business or project team to develop an agreed view of uncertainty, and what best to do about it, would involve workshops. This applies to:

• Conducting qualitative risk assessments
• Developing justifiable quantitative ranges as inputs for quantitative risk analyses and models
• Identifying and evaluating risk treatment options
• Identifying the lessons learned from a success or failure.

Face-to-face workshops are clearly not an option at the moment. Online videoconference facilities allow a large group of people to communicate, and we often have one or two remote personnel joining our larger workshops via videoconference. However, working with a large group on videoconference is more difficult when many people must join independently from remote sites, as communication is harder to manage and interactions are less effective.

We have adapted our approach to achieving sound collaborative outcomes. As with all our work, we tailor the details for each client and assignment to achieve the best possible results. In general terms, we:

• Conduct far more preparation than normal, with more telephone and video communication with individuals and small groups (often themselves working remotely), to ensure there is a sound and agreed starting point
• Generate draft workshop outcomes in advance, circulate them among the team for comment, and adjust them as necessary, sometimes breaking what would be a single exercise into stages to allow time for information and opinions to be circulated and reconciled
• Conduct virtual workshops by videoconference with a small group of key team members to adjust and ratify the outcomes.

We have been working in this mode recently for several substantial projects: to conduct risk assessments, to develop and evaluate risk treatment options, and to generate input ranges for quantitative risk analyses (to support our modelling activities noted above).

Training

We often provide internal face-to-face training for our clients. This is not possible at the moment.

We have been developing new training material for some of our clients, agreed and ready for the time when more normal work resumes.

Summary

We’re still at work!

We have adapted the way we work to suit the current environment in which we must all operate.

We’ll be happy to talk through your requirements and how we can help. Please be in touch.