Customer Stories

Istria has provided specialist risk management services to clients from all sectors over the last two decades. A selection of some of our more recent engagements is provided below:

London Underground

Sector : Transport / Construction / Public Sector

Region : EMEA

When it opened in 1863, London Underground was the world’s first underground railway. Today, this vital metro system, known locally as "The Tube", provides over three million passenger journeys a day to and from 275 stations. The network stretches across 253 miles (408 km) and is operated, maintained and supported by 12,000 staff. London Underground is crucial to the economy of London and, in turn, of the United Kingdom as a whole.

London Underground has been using the IRIS risk management software to manage risks in the facilities organization since 2003. It recently upgraded to IRIS v3 following extremely successful results with the earlier versions.

Click here to read the full case study

Ball Aerospace

Sector: Aerospace / Defence

Region : North America

Ball Aerospace is a world leader in the design, development and manufacture of innovative aerospace systems.  Founded in 1956 at the dawn of the space age Ball has a history of enabling many scientific firsts, including the first spacecraft to intercept a comet and the first instrument to provide definitive evidence of the Big Bang. 

Throughout its history, Ball has regularly made possible what was previously thought to be technically impossible.  Current projects include the development of the James Webb Space Telescope, the replacement for Hubble that is scheduled for launch in 2013 and the Keppler mission, due to seek out habitable planets outside the solar system from 2008.

Ball selected the IRIS software following a 13 month competitive tender process.  This tender assessed all of the leading software tools on the market and has been hailed by the PMI as a "best in class" tender process.  Ball have been using IRIS since 2006.

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DHL

Sector: Logistics

Region : EMEA

DHL needed to consolidate a disparate set of legacy data centres throughout Europe into a single streamlined corporate level data centre for the whole region. The timeline for the Programme was extremely challenging and the loss of live and historic data during the transition would have been enormously damaging to the organisation and its customer relations.

Istria seconded a full time risk manager to this New Data Centre Programme. Istria introduced its well established risk management method and reporting procedures to the project. This consisted of two distinct phases:

• In phase 1, Programme level risks were identified and recorded in a dynamic risk register, effective management reporting procedures were implemented and risks were managed at the appropriate level in the organisation
• During Phase 2, the risk identification process was drilled down to individual country level using local risk identification workshops held at each of the European sites. Each country maintained its own risk register under the control and guidance of the risk manager and these were aggregated the new management reporting procedure

The project was successfully delivered on time and within budget. The client credits effective management of the risks to the project as one of the main contributory factors to this successful delivery. Istria was especially commended on the level of buy-in to the risk management process it generated at senior management level which cascaded down the organisation.

BT Syntegra

Sector: Telecommunications

Region : EMEA

Istria was engaged by BT Syntegra to develop a risk management process for its project with the UK tax authorities. Istria was asked to design and develop the process and ensure that a new culture of risk management new best practice was embedded throughout the project.

Following the successful completion of the initial engagement, Istria was asked to develop a company wide approach to risk management. This company wide approach required quantitative risk analysis and Istria derived a set of statistical models such that risk exposure could be calculated using Monte Carlo techniques and the risk analysis tool @RISK.

Istria then seconded a Risk Manager full time to Syntegra to provide risk management advice and guidance for all major projects. The risk manager independently reported directly to the Finance Director.

The client credits Istria with effectively rescuing a secure project that was approaching meltdown.

UK Passport Service

Sector: Public Sector

Region : EMEA

The UK Passport Service issues UK passports to British nationals living in the UK. As an executive agency of the Home Office, the UKPS mission is "to confirm nationality and identity, enabling travel".

Over the last two years, the UK Passport Service (UKPS) has successfully implemented a range of new procedures and systems to prevent identity and passport fraud. In 2006, it will launch one of its most important counter-fraud initiatives, the biometric passport. The new design and security features, including a biometric chip containing the facial image and biographical data of the holder, will render the document more secure against forgery while facilitating more robust border controls.

Istria has been working with the UK Passport Service since June 2005, seconding one of our consultants as the risk manager for the biometrics project. We have recently extended this engagement following excellent first phase results.

OCCAR

Sector: Aerospace/Defence

Region : EMEA

OCCAR (Organisation Conjoint de Cooperation en matiere d'Armement) was established by Administrative Arrangement on 12th November 1996 by the Defence Ministers of France, Germany, Italy and the UK. Its aim is to provide more effective and efficient arrangements for the management of certain existing and future collaborative armament programmes.

The Defence Ministers of the four founding Nations went on to sign a Treaty, the "OCCAR CONVENTION", which came into force on the 28th January 2001 giving the organisation its legal status, allowing it to place and manage contracts, and to employ its own staff.

Istria was engaged to provide both strategic and project level risk management consultancy advice. The engagement included the development of new business processes and improvement of existing ones. Istria worked with the client to develop specific detailed risk management procedures and integrated these into the overall project management procedures for a range of programmes at a local and corporate level.

Click here to read the full case study

Ministry of Defence

Sector: Defence

Region : EMEA

Istria was engaged to provide consultancy services to the Ministry of Defence for the management programme for one of their military aircraft. The project team quickly adopted the Istria Risk Management Method and utilised the IRIS software to manage the risks to the Programme.

Istria provided risk management expertise to the project managers across a range of projects and programmes from radar and computer upgrades to mid-life fatigue programme and missile developments, and to members of the Management Board.

Assorted Other Engagements

Our team have provided a wide range of bespoke consulting solutions to clients over the years. This section sets out a small example of some of our previous engagments;

• Provided organisation-wide guidance, for a major rail operator, on risk management and introduced the IRIS (Istria Risk and Issue Support) software tool to manage project risks. Also successful in the development of Monte Carlo statistical analysis methods within the organisation to evaluate strategic and project risk exposure.
• Provided consultancy to a military aircraft's management programme; successfully introduced the risk management method and IRIS software into the Project Team. Provided risk management expertise to the project managers across a range of projects and programmes from radar and computer upgrades to mid-life fatigue programme and missile developments, and to members of the Management Board.
• Produced an approach for risk management based contingency planning and business continuity for a Government organisation, which was accepted as their corporate contingency planning method.
• Conducted a risk analysis on the testing viability for the mainframe systems’ interfaces that enabled the management team to correct shortfalls in the existing strategy. Developed project management techniques for the phases of an organisation's project, introducing pragmatic PRINCE, product based project management and MS Project to ensure effective delivery of products.
• Completed a risk analysis for the development and rollout phases of the project for a major transport organisation's Data Centre and audited their disaster recovery plans.
• Developed a Risk Management strategy for a Government organisation’s Y2K programme, which was successfully implemented across all the development and testing projects; this was accepted as the corporate method. Provided risk facilitation consultancy to the programme to ensure compliance with the standard and to assist project managers understand and develop their risk reduction plans.
• Used IRIS, the risk management analysis tool, to calculate statistical values for risk exposure based on differing testing approaches enabling the Programme Director to support proposals for software testing. The programme also enabled the successful migration from DOS based legacy systems to an NT4 platform and MS Office applications.
• Provided consultancy to a major parcel carrier on their Data Centre rationalisation program migrating 16 countries from their local NT environment to a centralised UNIX environment. Successfully integrated our risk and issue management method into the Quality System.